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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.

Satoru Hashimoto’s Afterlives of Letters: The Transnational Origins of Modern Literature in China, Japan, and Korea (2023) is a meticulously researched and intellectually rich study that probes the entangled relationships between modern literary works and their cultural pasts. It examines how East Asian authors negotiated profound sociopolitical and epistemological transformations during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Hashimoto demonstrates remarkable fluency in the multilingual archives of East Asia, displaying a deep command of Chinese (both classical and vernacular), Japanese, and Korean across their evolving linguistic landscapes shaped by the onset of modernity. Such scholarship—demanding expertise in multiple languages—is undeniably labour-intensive, yet immensely rewarding for readers, who are afforded a more nuanced and layered understanding of the region’s literary development and the shifting contours of its language policies. Yoojin Soh (2020) has likewise underscored the importance of considering the geopolitics of China and Korea when comparing Chinese, Japanese, and Korean translations of the French author Jules Verne.¹ Concepts and ideas were received differently by Meiji Japan—whose early translations were produced without the existential threat of “national extinction”—than by their counterparts in China and Korea, who bore precisely that burden when introducing foreign thought to their readerships. The translations, therefore, were at once interrelated and yet marked by distinctive inflections, discernible only through a critical engagement with the “original” texts in their various languages. In a similar vein, by working directly with primary sources rather than relying on translations, Hashimoto offers a finely detailed dissection of East Asia’s interwoven literary histories, while illuminating the divergent trajectories each nation pursued in its modern formation—on a broader scale than has hitherto been attempted.

Beyond its linguistic rigour, the book is impressively structured, its clear and logical progression balancing historical context with literary analysis. It deftly elucidates the complex relationships among China, Japan, and Korea. Part I, “A Multilayered Contact Space in Turn-of-the-Century East Asia”, centres on the influence of the revolutionary, literary critic, and translator Liang Qichao (1873–1929). Hashimoto first traces the impact of classical Chinese—both as linguistic medium and as cultural heritage—on Japanese texts and on Liang’s Chinese-language translation of Chance Meetings, revealing his acute knowledge of Meiji political fiction and its ideological tensions. He then examines Liang’s influence on the Korean writer Sin Ch’aeho (1880–1936), from the drafting of literary manifestos, to translation work, to the composition of heroic biographies—all of which bear traces of Liang’s thought. Sin’s reliance on and references to classical Chinese underscore Korean writers’ complex engagement with Chinese culture during the emergence of their own modern literature, or, as the book phrases it: “the paradoxical structure of the regional cultural context, in which the mediation of modernity rested on the legacies of the cultural past it was to replace, underpinned the turn-of-the-century Korean engagement with Chinese materials” (71). This opening section constitutes a critical intervention into how literature was produced and imagined within East Asia—not merely through the familiar East–West binary. The once-denigrated shared written language, dismissed by literary critics as archaic and pedantic, resurfaces in modern Chinese, Japanese, and Korean texts, revealing the intricate intra-Asian context in which modern literature was forged.

The book proceeds chronologically with Part II, “Reforming Language and Redefining ‘Literature’”, and Part III, “Japan’s Imperial Mimicry and Its Critique”, which examine literary production after the pioneering efforts of Liang Qichao and Sin Ch’aeho. In Part II, Hashimoto turns to the writings of Lu Xun (1881–1936), Mori Ōgai (1862–1922), and Yi Kwangsu (1892–1950), focusing on their early fiction and subsequent historical narratives. Part III revisits the controversial Zhou Zuoren (1885–1967), reinterpreting his semi-colonial Chinese writings as acts of resistance. The concluding chapter analyses the works of Kim Saryang (1914–1950), Long Yingzong (1911–1999), and Gu Ding (1914–1964)—writing from colonial Korea, colonial Taiwan, and Manchukuo respectively—who, as Hashimoto persuasively argues, each draw intertextual connections to Lu Xun’s life and oeuvre.

In these later sections, Hashimoto juxtaposes canonical figures with prominent contemporaries from their respective literary milieus. His treatment of Kim Saryang is particularly compelling, underscoring both his linguistic dexterity and critical acuity. The analysis of Kim’s self-translation—from Japanese into Korean of dialogue originally rendered in Korean-accented spoken Japanese—illuminates complex questions of national language, centre–periphery dynamics, voice(lessness), and agency. Hashimoto’s close reading brings to light the textured strata of translation, a method that merits far wider adoption in scholarship, given that language can never be presumed transparent. In the same chapter, the inclusion of Gu Ding and the significance of Manchukuo further enrich the narrative, particularly in light of imperial Japan’s expansion and absorption of new territories.

Yet what is most striking is the exclusively male cast of literary figures. While Hashimoto persuasively demonstrates the formative role of classical Chinese in the works of Lu Xun, Mori Ōgai, and Yi Kwangsu—both formally and thematically—the absence of female voices is conspicuous in an otherwise finely balanced study. For example, when considering incomplete literary forms and the boundaries of what constitutes literature, the inclusion of Chen Hengzhe (1890–1976)—a female overseas student experimenting with vernacular writing in 1917—would have lent greater force to the argument. Before becoming a professor and writer, Chen composed a story in the emerging vernacular Chinese about daily life at an American women’s college—a vivid account of modernity abroad, written in a strikingly fragmented fashion. Similarly, Lü Bicheng (1883–1943) composed poetry in the traditional ci form, yet infused with innovative content reflective of modern life and experience. Lü’s unofficial studies in the United States and her extended time in Europe parallel the trajectories of many of the male figures in the book. Their inclusion would have added further texture and complexity to the study, particularly in counterpoint to the male writers under discussion.

Relatedly, while fiction was championed by Liang Qichao and his intellectual circle, poetry too was a central preoccupation during this literary transition. This aspect of modern literary history, however, receives less attention. Given the book’s emphasis on literature’s dialogue with its cultural past, poetry surely merits a more prominent role. Hashimoto acknowledges that “‘Literature’ in its modern sense, or what I call ‘modern literature’ in this book, is a branch of an aesthetic endeavour that includes other genres such as painting, sculpture, poetry, and music” (8), yet fiction remains the dominant genre throughout. Hashimoto shows the breadth of his knowledge of the premodern Chinese literary canon, which is impressive, and analyzes poetry within longer prose. But since poetry was a living practice, sustained by modern literary figures such as Lu Xun himself, a more focused discussion would have been helpful to showcase how poetry functioned as a continuing medium through which modernity was articulated. 

Despite these critiques, Afterlives of Letters remains in its present form an exceptionally erudite and intellectually invigorating work. It will undoubtedly endure as a vital resource for scholars and readers interested in comparative literature, East Asian studies, and the transnational currents that shaped modern literary production across the region—beyond the simplistic terms of the East–West binary.

1. 徐维辰 Yoojin Soh 〈翻译野蛮 — 科学小说《铁世界》重的中亚文明观〉. 中国比较文学 2020年第一期. 75. ↩︎

How to cite: Lau, Jennifer. “The Power of Multilingual Inquiry: Mapping Intra-Asian Relations Beyond Binaries—Satoru Hashimoto’s Afterlives of Letters.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 17 Aug. 2025, chajournal.blog/2025/08/17/afterlives-letters.

Jennifer Junwa Lau teaches Chinese literature and film at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Dr Lau’s research centres on modern Chinese literature, travel writing, diaspora studies, and translation studies. Her current project lies at the intersection of Chinese Studies and Asian North American Studies—examining the writings of transient and diasporic Chinese individuals in North America from the 1860s onwards. Her most recent work on Chinese overseas students has appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Journal of Chinese Overseas.

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