Confirmation of Candidature - Candidate : Evan Milner

In the wake of the Second World War, scholars and writers were once again drawn to Japan. Among them were some—including Donald Richie, Donald Keene, and Edward Seidensticker—whose engagement with Japan continued long after the American occupation ended, and who spent the next several decades communicating the value of Japanese culture to an American public whose ideas about Japan had been formed by years of racist war propaganda. Despite their importance in shaping post-war views of Japan in the English-speaking world, these authors have usually been overlooked or regarded as secondary figures in scholarship dealing with western writers who took Japan as their subject.
Through tracing the intertwining personal and literary histories of these writers and mapping the shared features of their work, a more complete picture emerges of the personal, social, and ideological elements that shaped the post-war reception of Japanese culture in the west.

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