How to Read—and Be Read by— Konjiki yasha : Reception, Performance, and the Turn-of-the-Century Japanese Novel

Abstract

Abstract: In 1902, a literary journal carried the account of a group of men and women who had gathered to discuss Ozaki Kōyō's Konjiki yasha (The golden demon, 1897–1902). The account—which belongs to a genre known as gappyō , or "joint review"—provides insights into a distinct Meiji mode of reading. Bringing the joint review into conversation with Western reader-response theory, this article uncovers a view of reading as a transaction between a text and its readers that produces multiple interpretations through the performance of social positionalities.