Irina Holca is an associate professor of modern and contemporary Japanese literature at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Japan.George T. Sipos is an associate professor at the West University of Timişoara, Romania, where he teaches Japanese literature, language, and culture.

• Introduction. Forbidden Space(s): “Japan” in the Constructed Realm behind the Iron Curtain Part I: The Concrete and the Conceptual: Reception of Japan 1. Shifting Imagery on the Covers of Clavell’s Shōgun and the Romanian Reception of Japanese Visual Culture 2. The “Rediscovery” of Japan in Hungary in the 1950s-1960s 3. The Reception of Modern Japanese Literature in the German Democratic Republic: A Survey 4. Directions in the Slovene Translation of Japanese Literature during the Postwar Years 5. The Hungarian Reception of The Hiroshima Panels and the Communist Desideratum for World Peace 6. The Return to the Myth: Japanese Literature in Soviet Moldova Part II:The Imagined: Japan as Symbol of Resistance 7. After the Freeze and the Thaw: Kawabata Yasunari’s Nobel Prize and the Soviet Rediscovery of Japan 8. Rays behind the Iron Curtain: Japan, Cinema, and Bulgarian Socialist Culture 9. Two Japanese Theater Classics in the Shadow of Socialist Realism in Hungary 10. Sōsaku-hanga and ‘Progressive Japanese Art’ in Soviet Art History from the Late 1950s to the mid-1970s 11. Japanese Poetic Expression against Communist Oppression: The Haiku/ Senryū of Dissident Karel Trinkewitz and Others 12. The Reception of Clavell’s Shōgun: Fantasizing about Japan in Communist Romania

Irina Holca is an associate professor of modern and contemporary Japanese literature at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Japan.George T. Sipos is an associate professor at the West University of Timişoara, Romania, where he teaches Japanese literature, language, and culture.

• Introduction. Forbidden Space(s): “Japan” in the Constructed Realm behind the Iron Curtain Part I: The Concrete and the Conceptual: Reception of Japan 1. Shifting Imagery on the Covers of Clavell’s Shōgun and the Romanian Reception of Japanese Visual Culture 2. The “Rediscovery” of Japan in Hungary in the 1950s-1960s 3. The Reception of Modern Japanese Literature in the German Democratic Republic: A Survey 4. Directions in the Slovene Translation of Japanese Literature during the Postwar Years 5. The Hungarian Reception of The Hiroshima Panels and the Communist Desideratum for World Peace 6. The Return to the Myth: Japanese Literature in Soviet Moldova Part II:The Imagined: Japan as Symbol of Resistance 7. After the Freeze and the Thaw: Kawabata Yasunari’s Nobel Prize and the Soviet Rediscovery of Japan 8. Rays behind the Iron Curtain: Japan, Cinema, and Bulgarian Socialist Culture 9. Two Japanese Theater Classics in the Shadow of Socialist Realism in Hungary 10. Sōsaku-hanga and ‘Progressive Japanese Art’ in Soviet Art History from the Late 1950s to the mid-1970s 11. Japanese Poetic Expression against Communist Oppression: The Haiku/ Senryū of Dissident Karel Trinkewitz and Others 12. The Reception of Clavell’s Shōgun: Fantasizing about Japan in Communist Romania