TY - JOUR AU - David Lim AB - This essay examines the obscured history of Zen as an ideology of Japanese imperialism in Tan Twan Eng's The Garden of Evening Mists. It contends that the novel silently draws on this history as a narrative device to subvert readings that overlook both its mobilization of Zen and the fact that Zen, as it is popularly understood today by a majority of scholars and theologians, has been distorted by Western orientalists and Japanese apologists since the turn of the twentieth century. The essay makes a case for the need for readers to account for this obscured history precisely because it exerts overdetermining force on the protagonist's understanding of her experiences of the historical events that shaped her. BT - Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction DA - 01/1970 DO - 10/gcx9px DP - CrossRef IS - 4 LA - en N2 - This essay examines the obscured history of Zen as an ideology of Japanese imperialism in Tan Twan Eng's The Garden of Evening Mists. It contends that the novel silently draws on this history as a narrative device to subvert readings that overlook both its mobilization of Zen and the fact that Zen, as it is popularly understood today by a majority of scholars and theologians, has been distorted by Western orientalists and Japanese apologists since the turn of the twentieth century. The essay makes a case for the need for readers to account for this obscured history precisely because it exerts overdetermining force on the protagonist's understanding of her experiences of the historical events that shaped her. PY - 2015 SN - 0011-1619, 1939-9138 SP - 435 EP - 448 T2 - Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction TI - The Zen of Japanese Imperialism in Tan Twan Eng's The Garden of Evening Mists UR - http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00111619.2014.959640 VL - 56 Y2 - 2018/02/24/11:24:54 ER -