Edward Seidensticker and the Conservative Style in Japanese Literary Studies

This article explores aspects of postwar conservative thought through an unlikely but revealing case study: the writings of the American scholar and translator of Japanese literature Edward Seidensticker (1921–2007). Guided by a corpus of archival documents held in the Edward G. Seidensticker Papers at the University of Colorado-Boulder, the analysis puts Seidensticker’s perspective on postwar Japanese society into dialogue with his writings on what he called the “conservatism” of modern Japanese literature. This approach illuminates some of the key dynamics of postwar conservatism that have remained undertheorized in Japan studies scholarship.