Organizer and Chair: Rebecca L. Copeland, Washington University, St. Louis
Discussant: Esperanza Ramirez-Christensen, University of Michigan
Much attention has been paid the role of the mother-or of maternal worlds-in the literary works of such Japanese writers as Tanizaki Jun'ichirô and Shiga Naoya. We would like to use this panel to concentrate on father figures in female-authored writing. Father-influence and father-identification have had profound significance in women's writing from its inception as a court literature, where writing women were highly educated and highly valued commodities in a patriarchal system largely dependent on marriage politics. Not only did the writers of this period construct an eroticized father-daughter bond, they bequeathed to successive generations the conceptualization of women's writing as "daughterly." In this panel we will explore the multifaceted implications of "father-influence" in both the performance and the product of women's writing in Japan.
Dr. Edith Sarra will explore the early treatments of father-identified writing by referring to Towazugatari and the eroticization of the father-daughter bond which it inherited from Heian Period texts. Both Drs. Ann Sherif and Eileen Mikals-Adachi will continue discussion of the "daughterly" position of women writers by examining the literary relationships between writing daughters and their men-of-letters fathers, suggesting the larger ramifications of writing within a patriarchal system. Dr. Rebecca Copeland will focus on the works of Uno Chiyo whose father, though "non-literary," nevertheless "invades" the daughterly writing sphere as an authority figure and object of desire. Dr. Esperanza Ramirez-Christensen will serve as discussant.
The Filial Memorist and Her Amorous "Fathers": Towazugatari and the
Heian Poetics of the Father-Daughter Bond
Edith Sarra, Indiana University
Towazugatari (The Confessions of Lady Nijo, ca. 1306) is a belated work. Written after the Heian period, but deeply influenced by such classics of the Heian court as The Tale of Genji, its narrator describes a life literally and self-consciously articulated in terms of the already-written "lives" of fictional characters from The Tale of Genji. As in the Genji and a number of Heian court women's memoirs, an eroticized imagery of father-daughter relationships informs both the story that gets told, and the overtly "filial," or more specifically "daughterly" conceptualization of writing that underlies this memoir. Briefly sketching some of the major Heian treatments of these issues, this paper will demonstrate how Towazugatari creates telling variations on the father-daughter themes it inherits from the Heian period. The paper will conclude with some suggestions about the significance of these variations, and what contribution they might make to our understanding of the relationship between patriarchy and women's writing in classical Japanese court literature.
Father-Enchi Fumiko and the Man of Her Dreams
Eileen B. Mikals-Adachi, University of Notre Dame
Enchi Fumiko (1905-1986) has more literary prizes to her credit than any other woman writer in postwar Japan. Yet, to many Japanese, she is better known as the daughter of the renowned Japanese linguist Ueda Bannen than for any of her numerous literary accomplishments. Even praise for Enchi's translation of Genji monogatari into modern Japanese is frequently footnoted by the implication that this feat was possible only because of her paternal association.
While the fact that Enchi had a close relationship with her own father is apparent, the degree of fatherly influence seen in her work is yet to be defined. This paper will examine Ake o ubau mono, the semi-autobiographical trilogy awarded the Tanizaki Jun'ichirô Literary Prize in 1969 and one of the few works in which Enchi includes a father image. It will discuss the main theme of Enchi's literature-pursuit and expression of the self, and will focus on the role men play in this self-discovery. Not to be forgotten will be Enchi's classical use of dreams and the manner in which she incorporates the search for the "ideal" man into the problem of self-identity. In conclusion two questions will be raised-is Enchi's father indeed the "man of her dreams," and is Enchi able to transcend her father's fame and let her literature echo with a beauty all its own?
Needles, Knives and Pens: Uno Chiyo and the Reconstruction of the Absent Father
Rebecca L. Copeland, Washington University, St. Louis
Uno's love life has been well scrutinized, and the author has been defined as "love obsessed." But "father-obsessed" might be more accurate. Uno has re-invented her relationship with her father over and over in her many autobiographical works, describing his volatile temper, his abusiveness, his bravado, his inexplicable charm. She loved him and longed to be loved by him; and I would argue that this desire, largely unfulfilled, propelled her through her many tumultuous relationships with other men and more importantly provided the impetus for much of her fiction. Even when Uno is not writing about her father, he is present in his very absence. He infiltrates her writing space as the dominating principle, the voice of authority ever guiding his daughter, ever frustrating her desires.
In this paper I will examine the father principle in Uno's works as represented by father figures but also metonymically by those symbols of power that Uno uses to replace the father-knives, needles or writing instruments. With these symbols Uno reconstructs paternal worlds of confinement and enclosure, such as the house and its metaphorical replication in the marriage bond and in the very ordering device of narrative. With this study I hope to offer a reading that challenges Uno's audience to see her as other than simply love-obsessed and opens her writing to new interpretations.
A "Literary Daughter?": Koda Aya and Patriarchy
Ann Sherif, Case Western Reserve University
In this paper I will explore the parameters of patriarchy on both an individual and societal level in Japan by examining the literary relationship of the Japanese writer Koda Aya (1906-1990) with her father, legendary man of letters Koda Rohan (1868-1947).
I will discuss signs of compliance and resistance to the father/Father in Japan, specifically in Koda's works Shuen, Omoide no ki, and Misokassu. I will argue that, rather than representing a monolithic source of meaning, the Father in Koda's texts comes into existence as a shifting set of tropes, metaphors, and narrative strategies. I will refer to the works of Anglo-European feminist critics who have looked at the origins and changing status of patriarchal authority in the western narrative, and recent studies focusing on father-identified female writers, as well as Japanese critics who have examined the validity of applying to Japanese texts the psychological and hierarchical values implicit in western notions of patriarchy.