“Close yet far. Fractured identities in Nagai Kafū’s American Writings”

Between 1903 and 1908, Nagai Kafū (1879-1959), a young man of wealthy descent, lived in the United States, where he witnessed the conditions of the Japanese immigrant workers. I argue that the collection Amerika monogatari (1908) reflects his unease at the multilayered ‘Japanese identity’ suggested by their presence, and that by acknowledging this ‘diversity’ within the particular frame of the American cities at the turn of the century, he engaged in a reflection upon the notion of ‘Self’ that informed his entire American production, both fictional and diaristic. I intend to describe Kafū’s position within the Japanese network in the United States, and to analyse modes and strategies characterising his narrative of the identity gap, in order to define the meaning of the American experience in the formation of his sense of ‘being Japanese’. Particular emphasis will be placed upon the spatial-oriented representation of the I-narrators’ relationship with their ‘other’ compatriots and with the urban backdrops of their narratives. Being embodied by both the Western world and the so-called ‘Japs’, the idea of ‘Other’, in these short stories, is constructed along more varied borders than those of nationhood. Therefore, by concentrating on class, a social marker scarcely taken into consideration so far, I will try to demonstrate to what extent he gained awareness of its importance as an identitarian factor and how this affected his sense of group-belonging, his attitude towards society, and his literary expression.