Since Shmuel Eisenstadt published his ground-breaking concept of multiple modernities, there have been various scholarly attempts to free the term modernity from its narrow Eurocentric origins. In line with this, the essays on literature, art and film by Japanese and European scholars in this volume explore various aspects of modernity and its special form of modernism as a general meta-cultural and meta-national concept of social and cultural change. They thus provide a new and nuanced view of the scope of modernity and its specificities in America and Japan. The prefix 'dark' in the title alludes to the insight that these social and cultural transformations do and did not necessarily go along with solely positive effects - as particularly the name-giving Western optimistic version of modernity and modernism wanted to have it.

Since Shmuel Eisenstadt published his ground-breaking concept of multiple modernities, there have been various scholarly attempts to free the term modernity from its narrow Eurocentric origins. In line with this, the essays on literature, art and film by Japanese and European scholars in this volume explore various aspects of modernity and its special form of modernism as a general meta-cultural and meta-national concept of social and cultural change. They thus provide a new and nuanced view of the scope of modernity and its specificities in America and Japan. The prefix 'dark' in the title alludes to the insight that these social and cultural transformations do and did not necessarily go along with solely positive effects - as particularly the name-giving Western optimistic version of modernity and modernism wanted to have it.