Critical Failures: Modern Japan and the Possibility of Reading Otherwise

Critical Failures revisits the overlooked messiness at the heart of Japan's early experiments with modern criticism. In the Meiji era, young intellectuals posited that mastering the art of critical reading—called hihyō—was essential for Japan's advancement on the world stage. Yet, while they made concerted efforts to theorize hihyō and proposed ambitious ideals, their actual reading practice often fell short of what they set out to accomplish. Miyabi Goto argues that this gap between theory...