Contesting civilizations: Literature of Australia in Japan and Singapore

Australia and Japa n emerged simultaneously as modernizing states in a shared region, and Singapore joined them in the 1960s. Interaction between Australia and Japan is more than 150 years old, while its Australia/Singapore counterpart is much more recent. But mutual perceptions appear in both cases to be characterized by concerns about cultural superiority or inferiority, and by complex contests over the deference due to civilizations. Here, I will trace the workings of civilizational contestation in Australian, Japanese and Singaporean fiction.