This course surveys the literary and cultural history of Japan from the Meiji period (1868-1912) up to the Second World War (1941-1945), paying a particular attention to the origins and subsequent development of the narrative form of the novel. Topics of discussion will include: the relationship between the narrative form of the novel and the imagination of the nation-state, gender and literary genre, the fragmentation of narrative in modernist writings, the demarcation between “pure” and “mass” literature, and the role of translation in constructing conceptions of Japanese literature.