'Disruptions of Daily Life' explores the mass-media landscape of the early twentieth cspecific authorsentury to uncover the subversive societal impact of four major Japanese authors: Tanizaki Jun'ichir, Yokomitsu Riichi, Kawabata Yasunari, and Hirabayashi Taiko. The book examines the literature against global realities through a modernist lens, studying an alternative modernism that challenges the Western European model.

Previously issued in print: 2020.

Introduction : Shattering the Status Quo : Reading Modernism in the Early Twentieth Century -- Fetishism of the West in Tanizaki Jun'ichirō's A Fool's Love -- Subversions of Ethnicity in Yokomitsu Riichi's Neo-Sensationist Writings -- Kawabata Yasunari's The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa and the Narrative of the Present -- "Love" and (Male) Subjectivity in Hirabayashi Taiko's "In the Charity Ward" -- Coda : Against the National Literary Narrative.