"Despite the lamentably premature death of Maeda Ai in 1987, his works have left an incontrovertible mark on the study of early modern and modern Japanese literature. Adopting liberally from phenomenological hermeneutics, cultural anthropology, semiotics, and marxist literary study, Maeda invented new ways of inquiring into the historicity of 'literature,' thereby leading a number of young scholars of Japan in the United States in the direction of what would be generally recognized as 'cultural studies.' In the fields of trans-Pacific Japanese studies, it is no exaggeration to say that Maeda accomplished something comparable to what Raymond Williams did in the English-speaking worlds."--Naoki Sakai, Cornell University "Some of us were fortunate to walk with the scholar Maeda Ai as he quietly, with passion, led us back through the urban history of modern Japanese literary culture. Refusing to forget the ravages of war, he rendered foreign thinking familiar and detail significant. Maeda brought to his readers folklore disciplining children growing up in the alleyways, glimpses of women reading new magazines from within their spaces of confinement, records from colonial travel. Here James A. Fujii and his co-translators pass on Maeda's gifts with interpretations of erudition, respect, and imagination. Bravo and thank you."--Miriam Silverberg, University of California, Los Angeles
