What is Miraiha? Academic Discourses on Japanese Futurism

This paper presents an overview of the main texts (articles, memoirs, monographs, exhibition catalogues, and so on) that contributed to the articulation of a critical and historical discourse on the reception of Futurism in Japan in the years 1909–1944 and on the elaboration of Futurist elements in the works of Japanese artists and intellectuals of the same period. For clarity’s sake, a threefold partition is adopted: 1) studies in the Japanese language, which are the most substantial in terms of quantity and academic weight; 2) studies in languages other than Japanese, which are more accessible to an international audience but are less plentiful and, often, less significant; 3) studies on single authors, a crossover category that embraces both items in Japanese and in other languages. Particular emphasis is placed here on the historical dynamics that were operative in the configuration of this field of studies and in the formation of a specific canon of texts. Accordingly, this paper possesses a strongly diachronic structure. The report should not be mistaken for a complete list of all that has been written on this topic, but rather as an introduction to an ever-growing field of studies that will be fully documented in the forthcoming "Bibliographic Handbook of Futurism".