Tun-huang Reviewed at Quarterly Conversation

Our newest review at The Quarterly Conversation is Daniel Pritchard’s take on Tun-huang from NYRB Classics. He has an interesting take on what is sort of a Japanese version of the “Western” genre:

Despite this, or maybe because of it, Westerns are synonymous with American identity. They are spaces of black- and white-hatted morality tales that elaborate nationalist systems of ethics and values—so stereotypical, despite their hybrid sources, that in some French textbooks every single caricature of an American is dressed in a cowboy hat. The Western is in fact much more than the story of a bunch of macho cowboys running about the land: it is an art form of liminal space, a border between two areas in apparent conflict. In his introduction to Locations of Culture, Homi Bhabha wrote, “These ‘in-between’ spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood—singular or communal—that initiate new signs of identity.” For American culture, Westerns are just such spaces.

Yasushi Inoue’s Tun-huang is the echo of a Civil War–era Western: one published by a Japanese author in 1959, set in the western territories of early 11th-century China. Perhaps this is the wrong way to approach a novel of such historic scope—Inoue was in no way adapting the tropes of a Western to his setting—but, there are striking similarities. The racist overtones in Chinese attitudes toward the barbarian tribes. Martial outposts that attract civilian traders. Long treks across barren desert lands by traders, pilgrims, soldiers, and criminals. It is not whole, not a re-imagining by any means—but it is more than enough to put American readers in mind of the Old West.

We also serialized Damion Searls’ introduction to this book in Issue 22 of The Quarterly Conversation.

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