Roy Starrs


Roy Starrs is a British-Canadian scholar of Japanese literature and culture who teaches at the University of Otago in New Zealand. He has written critical studies of the major Japanese writers Yasunari Kawabata, Naoya Shiga, Osamu Dazai, and Yukio Mishima, and edited books on Asian nationalism, globalization, pan-Asianism, Japanese modernism, and cultural responses to disaster in Japan. He has also published essays on Japan-related topics such as the Kojiki, Lafcadio Hearn, and Japanese calligraphy.
Roy Starrs is also the Japan editor of the online The Literary Encyclopedia.
Starrs was born in Birmingham, England on November 18, 1946 and became a Canadian citizen as an adult. He received his Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia in 1986 and previously taught at University of British Columbia, Union College (New York), and Aarhus University.

Works by Roy Starrs

  • Deadly Dialectics: Sex, Violence, and Nihilism in the World of Yukio Mishima, University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1994, and.
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  • An Artless Art - The Zen Aesthetic of Shiga Naoya: A Critical Study with Selected Translations. RoutledgeCurzon..
  • "Writing the National Narrative: Changing Attitudes Towards Nation-Building Among Japanese Writers, 1900-1930", in Japan’s Competing Modernities: Issues in Culture and Democracy, 1900-1930. S. Minichiello ed. Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, pages 161–189 .
  • "Nation and Region in the Work of Dazai Osamu," in Roy Starrs
  • "The Road to Violent Action: Mishima Yukio," in Fascism: Critical Concepts in Political Science, volume 5, edited by Roger Griffin with Matthew Feldman. London; New York: Routledge. , pages 249–266..
  • "The Kojiki as Japan's National Narrative," in Asian Futures, Asian Traditions, edited by Edwina Palmer. Folkestone, Kent: Global Oriental..
  • "Lafcadio Hearn as Japanese Nationalist," in Nichibunken Japan Review: Journal of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Number 18, 2006, pages 181–213.
  • "Ink Traces of the Dancing Calligraphers: Zen-ei Sho in Japan Today," in Henry Johnson and Jerry C. Jaffe, eds. Performing Japan: Contemporary Expressions of Cultural Identity London, Global Oriental and Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press..
  • "Politics and Religion in Japan," in Religion Compass 3/4, pages 752–769.
  • Modernism and Japanese Culture, London/New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
  • ed., "Politics and Religion in Modern Japan: Red Sun, White Lotus," London/New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
  • "Zen, Japan, and the Art of Democracy," in the "New Statesman," July 4, 2011.
  • ed., "Rethinking Japanese Modernism," Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012.
  • "La estética Zen de Muga en el proyecto Renga de Octavio Paz." In Rogelio Guedea, editor, Países en tránsito: estudios de literatura comparada. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2016.
  • "Renga: A European Poem and its Japanese Model." Comparative Literature Studies.
  • "Japanese Poetry and the Aesthetics of Disaster." In Minh, N., New Essays in Japanese Aesthetics. Lexington: Rowman and Littlefield, 2017.
  • "Japan’s Perennial New Man: The Liberal and Fascist Incarnations of Masamichi Rōyama." In Matthew Feldman et al, editors, The ‘New Man’ in Radical Right Ideology and Practice, 1919-45. London: Bloomsbury, 2018.
  • "The Fortunes of Pan-Asianism: Past, Present and Future." In The Journal of World History..
  • Review of the book The culture of the quake: The great Kantō earthquake and Taishō Japan. Journal of Japanese Studies, 44, pages 203-207.
  • "The Tokyo Gas Attack Was Japan’s 9/11." In Fair Observer, July 11, 2018.
  • Review of the book The rise and fall of modern Japanese literature. Japan Review, 34, 238-239, 2019.
  • "Suzuki Daisetsu no reikanron: Bunka o koeta dentatsu ni idomu". In Y. Shoji & J. Breen, Suzuki Daisetsu: Zen o koete.. Kyoto: Shibunkaku, 2020.
  • "Mishima, Bowie and the Anti-Metaphysics of the Mask", In Masks: Bowie and Artists of Artifice, edited by James Curcio. Bristol, United Kingdom: Intellect Books, 2020.
  • Review of the book The rise and fall of modern Japanese literature. In Nihon Kenkyū, 62, 216–218, 2021.
  • "D. T. Suzuki's theory of inspiration and the challenges of cross-cultural transmission". In J. Breen, S. Fumihiko & Y. Shōji, Beyond Zen: D. T. Suzuki and the modern transformation of Buddhism.. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2022.
  • Review of the book The awakening of modern Japanese fiction: Path literature and an interpretation of Buddhism. Eastern Buddhist, 2, 91–95, 2022.
  • "The Paradoxes of Japan's Cultural Identity: Modernity and Tradition in Japanese Literature, Art, Politics and Religion. London: Routledge, 2025.
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