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An essay is presented which explores the queer feminist writings of Japanese author Ekuni Kaori particularly her significant contributions to Japanese literature.

Yoko Tawada, who writes in both German and Japanese, often uses images of reading to help her explore what she designates as exophony, that is, a condition of living, speaking, and writing outside one's mother tongue. The more closely Tawada's characters read German, however, the less they are able to feel at home in it. Her narratives often portray 'Japanese' narrators in German settings who struggle to make sense of a system of visual symbols that conjure up sound images, which in turn are interpreted for meaning. The narrators are accustomed to a system consisting of visual images already imbued with meaning. Tawada's attention to language underlies her exploration of foreignness. She recasts alienation as a stimulant to new ways of thinking about gender, otherness, and belonging. This article shows how two narratives, 'Von der Muttersprache zur Sprachmutter' and 'Das Fremde aus der Dose', link illiteracy and marginality with the alphabet and gender. It addresses how Tawada's texts contribute to discussions about the mother tongue and systems of writing. It then analyses the texts noted above as key examples of Tawada's 'foreignising' manner of reading that pierces cultural conventions and animates language. This manner of reading also isolates its practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a young woman, the Japanese writer Miyamoto Yuriko travelled to the Soviet Union in late 1927 and was transformed by the experience. In the world's first and only socialist state, she perceived the possibility of equal relationships between men and women that were both emotionally and intellectually satisfying. In Soviet Russia, a woman could be 'fully bloomed': an equal citizen and worker as well as a wife and mother. Through an examination of her two self-narratives based on her time abroad - her diary and the retrospective, autobiographical novel Dōhyō (Signposts) - I will demonstrate how for Yuriko, the political and personal were inseparable. Her whole-hearted endorsement of the USSR and the equality it seemed to offer women was part of the individual journey begun with her love marriage, her divorce, and her relationship with Yuasa Yoshiko, whom she left for Miyamoto Kenji, a committed communist, after her return to Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Meiji Era writer Higuchi Ichiyō (1872-1896) enjoyed a smooth and rapid canonization after her early death and has occupied the preeminent position of first woman of modern Japanese literature ever since. Her assumed virginity played an important role in the construction of her image as a tragic heroine and has influenced literary scholarship on her work, increasing the desire and license of scholars to retrospectively "complete her text." While physical virginity was a very new concept in Japan with ambiguous connotations, it became during Ichiyō's lifetime a site of contention amid evolving gender roles, literary practices, and moral systems. In this article I argue that Ichiyō scholarship not only demonstrates the gender bias in Japanese literary studies and canon formation, but also allows us to trace the evolution of conceptions of bodily and literary "purity" and the struggle over representations of ideal Japanese femininity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on a selective reading of some of the longer proletarian writing in Nyonin geijutsu (Women's arts) by Hirabayashi Eiko, Nakamoto Takako, Matsuda Tokiko and Toda Toyoko. It explores the influence of Soviet Russia on their writing and contends that these are powerful works of literary significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recognised as the founder and principal moving force behindNyonin geijutsu(Women's arts), Hasegawa Shigure expended enormous energy coordinating the activities of the women associated with this magazine coterie. Shigure's own contribution to the journal included commentary essays, editorial notes and at least one dramatic work. Her most enduringNyonin geijutsutextual product, however, was a series ofzuihitsu, an essay form that literally translates as miscellaneous brushstrokes, each with the principal title, ‘Nihonbashi’. The first of these essays was published on 1 April 1929 while the remainder featured intermittently over the four years or so of the life of the journal. In this article, I focus on Shigure's representation of the topos of old Nihonbashi in the early essays of the set. Particular attention will be given to the work that commences the collection, ‘Machi no kōsei’ (The structure of the town), and to three other early pieces, ‘Sobaya no Rikyū’ (Rikyū of the soba shop), ‘Gensen shōgakkō’ (Gensen Primary School) and ‘Daimaru no gofukuten’ (Daimaru kimono store). Through a close reading of excerpts of these texts, I will argue that Shigure uses the old Nihonbashizuihitsuto create a series of childhood memory maps that exercise an evocative and consolatory power similar to the work of more recognised writers of memory both inside and outside Japan. I will further draw on the ideas of Gilles Deleuze and Julia Kristeva to argue for a place for Shigure in the modern Japanese canon. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article highlights the important contribution made by Kamichika Ichiko to the interwar publishing scene by providing an overview of the literary journalFujin Bungeilaunched by her and an analysis of three stories it published from leading female writers of the era, Matsuda Tokiko, Hirabayashi Eiko and Asai Hanako.Fujin Bungeiwas a rare oppositional voice within the media that questioned the narrow nationalism sanctioned and promoted by the Japanese state when others had fallen silent or been silenced. Furthermore, its focus on writing by women provided a forum for passionate and provocative works which shed new light on the downfall of the Proletarian Literature Movement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on contemporary, popular, woman-authored books in Japanese popular fiction. Topics include the popularity of the book "Kitchen," by Yoshimoto Banana, the emergence of comic books marketed toward women known as shōjo manga, and the creation of the genre L-bungaku (women's literature). Information is provided on how female authors have changed cultural conventions in Japanese society through their works and also have given authentic voices to Japanese women such as mothers, daughters, and females who make nontraditional life choices.

The article presents a profile of Yayori Matsui, a Japanese woman known for her journalism and her founding of the Women's Active Museum on War and Peace, a private peace museum in Tokyo, Japan. Matsui was known for her political activism, particularly her support of women's rights. Her efforts to raise awareness of the abuse of comfort women by the Japanese military during World War II are noted. Some biographical information about her parents, education, and travels to the U.S. and France are also provided.

This essay examines excerpts from two memoirs by Japanese women: one by the late author and critic, Okabe Itsuko (1923-2008), and the other by stage and screen actress Shinya Eiko (1928-). These memoirs deal directly with the narrators" experiences at the end of the Pacific War and in the early postwar years. Young adults at the end of the war, both women were products of the prewar education system and were raised to be loyal imperial subjects. But on August 15, 1945, the world they knew collapsed and they were forced to discover new pathways in life. This essay argues that the act of remembering and reconstructing the events at the end of the war, and situating them in a coherent narrative, was a primary means for these women to reconstitute their subjectivity and develop a sense of historical agency. Both women begin their memoirs by recalling the day of the infamous "imperial broadcast" announcing Japan"s surrender, and then proceed to recount how they sought out new pathways. Their chosen pathways enabled them to reconfigure their identities, create new subject positions, and transform the world around them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can we account for the very different reactions to political oppression of two prominent women writers in the proletarian literature movement in Japan? Scholars have dismissed Sata Ineko's tenkō as a practical response to quotidian demands while casting Miyamoto Yuriko's courageous refusal to compromise as enabled by her husband's example. In this essay, I attempt to go beyond explanations that rely on the differences between their personal lives and material conditions, focusing instead on their understandings of class identity, gender, and authorship. These issues affected not only their behavior under political persecution but their literary style, subject matter, and authorial voice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author argues that English novelist Jane Austen's playful sense of humor and love of the comic in his work "Pride and Prejudice," has made a strong impact on Japanese woman writer Nogami Yaeko. Yaeko was a great admirer of Austen's novel, making a careful reading of the narrative in Japan. The comic methodology used by Austen in his novel has helped Yaeko to develop effective personal and professional strategies to deal with the male-dominated environs of the pre-war Japanese literary community.

The article examines the subjected voice of Tomo, the protagonist, and of other significant women featured in the novel "The Waiting Years," by Japanese novelist Enchi Fumiko. The examination of strategies that permit the foregrounding of the mother's unheard voice by author Michelle Boulous Walker was used to explore the articulation between the subjugated voices of such women and their motherness.

The article explores the early fiction of Japanese author Nakamoto Takako and the representation of the body in Japanese modernist and proletarian literature. Her fiction is based on her self-perceived femininity as much as on proletarian literary theory. She delves with issues that affect women such as heterosexual prostitution in her literary works.

Miura Ayako (1922–99) rose from obscurity to literary stardom on the basis of her first novel, Hyōten , published serially in 1964–5, and became in the process not only one of Japan's best-selling novelists but also one of its leading Christian voices. Hyōten (Freezing point), one of the best-known and most widely read novels of the past few decades, follows the travails of one family in Hokkaido as they struggle with marital infidelity, death, deception and betrayal, and was written to illustrate the Christian notion of original sin. It fails fully to address this notion, however, with the intended religious theme muted in favor of achieving success as a serialized novel. The novel thus raises interesting questions regarding the nature of so-called ‘evangelistic literature’ and the continuing debate in Japan over the relationship between ‘pure’ and ‘popular’ literature. This article argues that it is only in the sequel to Hyōten , Zoku Hyōten (serialized from 1970 to 1971), that Miura, now firmly established as a Christian novelist, returned to the characters and situations in her first novel and adequately depicted the religious themes of sin and forgiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Offers a look at several autobiographies of Japanese women. Explanation that people write memoirs and autobiographies for a variety of reasons; Questions that may come to a reader's or a researcher's mind in reading Japanese women's autobiographies; Feminist theme and content that can be found in several Japanese women's autobiographies; Description of the culture and society of Japan; Discussion on historical and literary periods in Japan.

Outlines the history of the existence of homoerotic attraction in women's magazines in Japan. Description of love stories between boys culminating in a genre termed YAOI; Account on the expansion of the YAOI genre in the Internet; Influence of sexual freedom on commercial YAOI magazines; Factors contributing to Japanese women's interest in male homosexual love.

This article considers the meaning of Yamada Amy's novels and short stories with regard to women's status in Japanese society. Yamada Amy was born in 1959 as the oldest of three daughters. Her essays in which she frequently writes about her family give the reader an impression that her parents are not traditional but open-minded and have encouraged Amy's independence. Since her first novel, Bedtime Eyes, Amy has continuously written about the relationship between a Japanese woman and a foreign man, mostly and Afro-American. This is the most prominent characteristic of her work and certainly helped her rise to fame in early days. Beside Afro-American characters, independence of heroines is the common characteristic of Amy's novels. Female main characters in Amy's novels are independent in the sense that they are emotionally strong, bold, confident of themselves and in charge of their own lives. This is clearly observed in their attitude toward drinking and sex. Their attitudes toward drinking, sex and love clearly indicates that Amy's heroines deviate from the traditional female sex role which emphasizes passivity and virginity. The relationships Amy's heroines develop with men also attest to their nonconformity to the traditional sex role.

Ogino Anna drew both critical and popular attention with a collection of parodic 'fiction-critiques' entitled Watashi no aidokusho (My love-hate affair with books) in 1991. t She has added many more titles to the list of her works since then, most of which are parodic fiction-critiques and parody-like works of fiction. This paper examines how parodic language in some of these texts works to trace the operations that produce what qualifies as 'men' and 'women' of different classes and categories. The paper attempts at the same time to highlight the subversive function of laughter that disrupts the process by which the narrator-protagonists of the same texts become subjected to the discursive effects of their own parodic scrutiny. I also seek to address some problems of feminist politics recently brought to attention by critics such as Judith Butler and Teresa Ebert. Considering Ogino's parody as a possible, if not entirely unproblematic, attempt at a new feminist strategy of subversion, I ask the question of how resistance is, or is not, possible after identity politics and oppositional subjects have fallen into disrepute. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]