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[REVIEW] “Between Rupture and Continuity: Charting Anachronistic Literary Modernity in Satoru Hashimoto’s Afterlives of Letters” by Charlie Ng

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Satoru Hashimoto, Afterlives of Letters: The Transnational Origins of Modern Literature in China, Japan, and Korea, Columbia University Press, 2023. 432 pgs.

China, Japan and Korea—three East Asian countries deeply rooted in shared classical Confucian and literati traditions—faced similarly disruptive encounters with Western imperialism and sought modernisation through active engagement with Western scientific knowledge and political thought during their respective reform movements. The rapidly changing landscape of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was a period of cultural introspection and transformation, as well as the rise of modern literature that reflected new progressive thinking and emerging social realities.

Provocative and meticulously researched, Satoru Hashimoto’s Afterlives of Letters: The Transnational Origins of Modern Literature in China, Japan, and Korea offers an innovative reframing of the emergence of modern East Asian literature. Bold in both scope and historical vision, the book challenges conventional narratives that portray East Asian literary modernity as a rupture from classical traditions. Instead, it argues that modern literature in China, Japan and Korea arose through an anachronistic relationship with the very cultural past it ostensibly sought to transcend. Amply informed by empirical historical research, Hashimoto’s transnational study of East Asian literary history illustrates this “anachronistic engagement” with classical culture “as a hitherto underexplored textual dynamic integral to the beginnings of modern literature in the region” (p. 2). Crucially, this engagement stems from the incommensurability of classical and modern epistemes—a condition in which the past resists simple demarcation or assimilation, compelling writers to negotiate, rather than resolve, its enduring presence. By tracing the “afterlives of classical letters” (p. 25), the author demonstrates how turn-of-the-century writers repurposed and responded to premodern forms in their efforts to navigate the crises of imperialism, nationalism and modernisation.

The book’s compelling and original thesis draws its theoretical grounding from a historicist method of reconstructing literary contexts and dynamics, combined with post-structuralist textual critique. As signalled by its title, Afterlives of Letters evokes Derridean notions of textual survival and the reinterpretation of meaning over time, while The Transnational Origins signals a historicist attention to contextual specificity—particularly the transregional literary exchanges and socio-political conditions that shaped the development of East Asian modern literature. The study’s methodology is historicist in its focus on how texts emerged from concrete imperial, nationalist and modernist contexts, yet also post-structuralist in its dismantling of teleological narratives premised on uncritical notions of progress or modernity. Drawing on Foucault’s conception of literature as a discourse that “affirms its own precipitous existence” (qtd. in Hashimoto, p. 9), the book treats modern literature not as a stable category, but as an open-ended, self-reflexive practice.

Rejecting the binary of rupture and continuity, the study reveals how writers in China, Japan and Korea reconstructed their relationships to classical traditions amid profound geopolitical upheaval. By attending to both writers’ purposive engagements and the unintended afterlives of texts—including their circulation, adaptation and reinterpretation across borders—the book presents literary modernity as a dynamic and evolving transnational phenomenon. This theoretical approach proves remarkably effective in illuminating the complex genesis of modern East Asian literature. By deftly interweaving historicist reconstruction with a post-structuralist sense of textual instability, Hashimoto offers a nuanced analysis that revises prevailing understandings of East Asian literary modernity. His work provides a persuasive corrective to narratives of cultural rupture, demonstrating instead the enduring vitality of classical traditions within the texture of the modern. The argument is coherent, theoretically sophisticated and empirically grounded in the unique transnational literary dynamics of the region.

Afterlives is organised in three parts: 1. “A Multilayered Contact Space in Turn-of-the-Century East Asia,” 2. “Reforming Language and Redefining ‘Literature’,” and 3. “Japan’s Imperial Mimicry and Its Critique.” The structure gradually elucidates how East Asian intellectuals navigated modernisation and Western influence, while drawing upon shared cultural traditions to cultivate a space for transnational exchange. The two chapters comprising Part One focus on Liang Qichao—his engagement with classical Chinese traditions as well as his East Asian interlocutors, particularly the influence of Meiji political novels and the writings of Sin Ch’aeho.

The study then turns to the tensions between vernacular reform and the persistence of classical frameworks, analysing how the concept of “literature” was redefined in the context of broader nation-building and modernisation efforts. This section attends primarily to the works of Lu Xun, Mori Ōgai, and Yi Kwangsu, drawing comparative insights from their literary trajectories. The final part examines what Hashimoto terms “Japanese imperial mimicry”—a paradoxical synthesis of modern colonialism and classical Confucian rhetoric. It explores Zhou Zuoren’s wartime writings as emblematic of the complex negotiations of intellectual survival under Japanese occupation, while also investigating the transnational allegorical functions of late colonial Korean, Taiwanese, and Manchukuo literatures through their intertextual engagements with Lu Xun’s oeuvre.

Each section begins with an overview that meticulously outlines the historical context and requisite cultural knowledge, thereby facilitating the reader’s grasp of the intricate interplay between tradition and modernity, and supporting the book’s critical engagement with East Asia’s fraught transitions under colonial and imperial regimes.

The case studies are judiciously and persuasively selected—both congruent with and illustrative of the central arguments. Moreover, the analyses are diverse and dynamic, conveying a sense of intellectual progression as they trace the manifold ways in which classical traditions were negotiated through lived interactions and (inter)textual representations. For instance, in the section on language reform and the redefinition of “literature,” the comparative study of Lu Xun, Mori Ōgai, and Yi Kwangsu is developed through the lens of “parody” and each writer’s treatment of historical fiction. Hashimoto explores how the three engaged with classical cultures via distinct parodic strategies—such as Lu Xun’s parody of the zhuan genre in Ah Q, Mori Ōgai’s ironic depiction of heroines from classical romance in The Dancing Girl, and Yi Kwangsu’s affective self-transformation via a parody of classical norms in Heartless. Their respective approaches to historical fiction, in turn, operate as generic allegories of modern East Asian literature, revealing how these authors reconfigured modernity by engaging with the spectral residues of the past—the “shadows of ghosts” (195).

Both the parodic mode and the allegorical function of historical fiction underscore the self-reflexivity of modern literature in negotiating cultural disjunctions and inventing new forms at the interstices of tradition and innovation. In addition to “parody” and “allegory,” Hashimoto also mobilises the concept of “intertextuality” to show how Lu Xun’s texts were appropriated in colonial literatures—not as passive imitations, but as dynamic acts of resistance that unsettled imperial cultural hegemony. Through transregional adaptations by authors such as Gu Ding, Long Yingzong, and Kim Saryang, Lu Xun’s works emerge as allegories that suspend imperial signification, forging instead a shared semantic horizon for critical introspection (282). Just as Lu Xun redefined literature through his engagement with—and expansion of—cultural traditions, these colonial writers transformed his intertextual resonances into acts of border-crossing critique (283). Their writings thus illuminate the transnational genesis of modern literature and its enduring capacity to contest ideological confinement and imperial power.

As a work of comparative literature, the book excels in balancing influence study (e.g., Liang Qichao’s impact on Sin Ch’aeho) with parallel analysis (e.g., the parodic techniques of Lu Xun, Mori Ōgai, and Yi Kwangsu). Its layered narratives—whether tracing Liang Qichao’s transregional influences or examining how Zhou Zuoren and colonial or semi-colonial writers resist imperial cultural assimilation and give voice to suppressed colonial subjectivities—are persuasively articulated and richly contextualised. By integrating cultural theory with regional histories, Afterlives offers a transformative lens through which to understand the origins of modern literature—not as a Eurocentric import, but as a dynamic, transregional practice forged amid the unresolved tensions between the old and the new.

Despite its considerable strengths—rigorous argumentation, substantial historical inquiry, and carefully curated case studies that illuminate the transnational dynamics of East Asian literary modernity—Afterlives reveals two notable limitations. First, its selection of writers leans heavily towards socio-politically active male intellectuals such as Liang Qichao and Lu Xun, whose engagement with nation-building and reformist discourse is overt. While these figures undoubtedly shaped literary modernity, their predominance in a study of East Asian modern literature risks reinforcing a narrow definition of the category—one intrinsically tied to explicit political agendas. This focus potentially overlooks authors whose works reflect modernity through more nuanced engagements with tradition, whether aesthetic, psychological, or domestic.

Second, the study’s exclusive focus on male writers leaves unexamined how women negotiated classical traditions in their pursuit of literary modernity. The absence of figures such as Qiu Jin (China), Higuchi Ichiyō (Japan), or Na Hye-sok (Korea) raises critical questions: Did women’s access to—or exclusion from—classical education inflect their modernism in distinct ways? How might their gendered reinterpretations of tradition complicate the book’s central claims? By omitting these voices and, however inadvertently, privileging a masculinist, activist canon, the study forgoes the opportunity to explore how modernity’s “anachronisms” operated across gendered experiences. These limitations, however, do not detract from the book’s groundbreaking contributions; rather, they offer an invitation for future scholarship to expand the framework it so compellingly establishes.

Afterlives of Letters, the culmination of more than fifteen years of research, stands as a major contribution to East Asian literary studies. While its ambitious scope occasionally risks overwhelming the reader with detail, the book’s strengths lie in its meticulous historical inquiry and the author’s remarkable ability to synthesise vast multilingual materials—interweaving transnational narratives with precision. Its sophisticated textual analyses resonate powerfully with the historical accounts, illuminating how East Asian intellectuals navigated modernity without disavowing their classical inheritance—a testament to both the author’s scholarly rigour and interpretive acumen.

How to cite: Ng, Charlie. “Between Rupture and Continuity: Charting Anachronistic Literary Modernity in Satoru Hashimoto’s Afterlives of Letters.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 12 Jul. 2025, chajournal.com/2025/07/12/afterlives.

Charlie Ng is currently teaching at the School of Arts and Social Sciences of Hong Kong Metropolitan University. She studied English at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and graduated with a PhD in English Literature from the University of Edinburgh. Her poetry can be found in Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine. [All contributions by Charlie Ng.]

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