The term "modern" included department stores, provocative dress styles, smoking in public, cocktails, the financial independence (and perceived promiscuity) of women, photography, cinema, radio, mass-circulation newspapers and the influence of advertising, together with the arrival of a whole range of electronic household devices. Tradition, by contrast, was associated with social deference, religion, sexual modesty and hostility to Western innovations.
Erotic Grotesque Nonsense parallels Frank Dikotter's survey of the arrival of modern objects in early 20th century China in Things Modern [reviewed in the Taipei Times on Aug. 12, 2007]. Like him, Miriam Silverberg thinks of herself as "revisionist," meaning that she doesn't deplore the developments she describes as the incursions of an exploitative capitalism, but sees them as things welcomed by the population at large.
Hollywood films, in her view, were central to the Japanese idea of the modern during the 1930s. These, however, sometimes contained visions of the "exotic" Orient that included sexual invitation on the one hand and so-called Asiatic barbarism on the other. This was retained in doctored Japanese versions, but with Japan firmly installed on the "civilized" side, and the alluring, but nevertheless degenerate, habits reserved for the rest of Asia, notably China.
With the beginning of the Japanese invasions - first of China, then of Southeast Asia - erotic grotesque nonsense wasn't entirely sidelined, but was, at least initially, incorporated into the military's program. Comparisons were made between the female body and a battlefield - between male pleasure and male death, in other words. This clearly wasn't going to deceive many people for very long, and soon patriotic Japanese films openly glorified war and "self-sacrifice" for the greater good of the fatherland.
Erotic Grotesque Nonsense is an academic book, and so not easygoing for the general reader. This is a pity. A hundred years ago someone might have said that an Oxford professor called A.C. Bradley had written a wonderful book called Shakespearean Tragedy and that the average educated person might well enjoy it. Sadly, this is no longer the case, and "academic" now generally carries the implication "unlikely to give any real pleasure." Though this book generally avoids, for instance, post-structuralist jargon, its catchy title nonetheless remains its most alluring feature.
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