Overview
[AI-Generated Summary]: KIRA Takayuki reviews Hoyt Long’s 2021 book “The Values in Numbers: Reading Japanese Literature in a Global Information Age” (Columbia UP), which explores digital humanities approaches to analyzing modern Japanese literature through quantitative methods. The review discusses how the book examines the history of quantitative turns in Japanese literary studies from Natsume Sōseki’s early attempts through contemporary computational analysis, revealing patterns such as the I-novel’s characteristic vocabulary redundancy and connections between seemingly disparate genres. The review highlights how Long’s work demonstrates the complementary relationship between qualitative and quantitative research, addresses the politics of datasets including biases in digital archives like Aozora Bunko, and opens new possibilities for understanding literature in the age of AI and big data. Originally published in Japanese in α-Synodos No. 318 (December 2023), this English translation was posted on August 19, 2025.