Organizer and Chair: James L. Huffman, Wittenberg University
Mary A. Knighton, University of California, Berkeley
The late 1950s and early ‘60s saw an unprecedented move towards the self-definition and modernization of an independent postwar, post-Occupation Japan. Amidst social and political upheavals, in 1960 Kurahashi Yumiko’s story "Partei" (political party) appeared, satirizing the "blind faith" of student activists in a political organization suggestive of both the Japan Communist Party (JCP) and the student-led Anpo demonstrations of the time.
This representation first recounts how three literary critics (Hirano Ken, Niwa Fumio, and Eto Jun) received Kurahashi’s early fiction, and how accusations of plagiarism leveled at it suggest the policing of established, Japanese "pure literature" (junbungaku). Kurahashi’s characteristic "plagiarism," I claim, can be viewed as a feminist, modernist strategy that throws into question not only institutionalized humanist values and ideals, but even the romantic notion of their subversion. This destabilization is effected through the text’s construction of a split narratorial subjectivity that is markedly de-interiorized, and rendered in spatial metaphors evocative of Japan’s 1960s architectural movement, Metabolism. Metabolism theorized a distinctly anthropomorphic and organic architecture in which buildings act like bodies. Throughout "Partei" the narrator-protagonist is constructing herself both as and in relation to the surfaces of a metabolically embodied architecture. Finally, an emphasis on surface tensions rather than on interior depth in Kurahashi’s "Partei" serves to draw attention to measurable and visible effects rather than to hypothesized and motivated causes, resulting in a subjectivity that is inextricable from its environment and historical coordinates, a subjectivity for which neither identity nor gender is given but only interminably negotiated.
Isolde Standish, King Alfred’s University College, England
As in most countries, Japanese television schedules are determined by, and to a certain extent determining of viewers’ work-related timetables, and relatedly programme-makers’ expectations of the gender of the viewing audience. This paper concentrates on a textual analysis of two highly popular jidai geki (samurai) detective series (Hisatsu shigoto nin and Meibugyo Toyama no Kinsan) and two equally popular gendai geki detective series (Hagure keiji and Sasarai keiji). All these dramas occupied the 9–10 p.m. time slot on commercial channels with repeats shown in the 10–11 a.m. and 4–5 p.m. slots. I argue that these are women’s time slots and that these programmes are constructed with a specific married female target audience in mind.
In this paper I concentrate on two interrelated themes: first a deconstruction of the "feminised" male hero and secondly, I contextualise his role within the formulaic narrative structure of the dramas considered. In particular I examine the star persona of the actor Fujita Makoto who heads the cast in two of the above-named series. From an analysis of his star persona, it is obvious that he has been inflected with all the positive attributes of the middle-class salaryman as defined by programme-makers’ expectations of women’s desires. His great popularity, exploited by television commercials, would reinforce this definition as dominant. Incorporated into his fictional persona as law enforcer in these series are discourses of the patriarchal structure of the company work-group and women’s place within these groups. Therefore, I argue that these drama series have a complex interrelated dual structure which I conclude is gender specific; one based on an emotional theme and centered on the female characters, and the other the act of solving the crime. Thus the series analysed, despite their claims to modernity and feminism (women are incorporated into the work-place), confirms dominant gender stereotypes of women as emotional and dependent. On the other hand male heroes, although feminised, display traditional masculine characteristics of "goal centeredness and assertiveness" in that they solve the crime and are responsible for carrying the plot forward.
Catherine Youngkyung Ryu, University of Michigan
The paradigm of culture/men and nature/women has been ubiquitously deployed as an essential tool for buttressing the patriarchal ideology in Japan. Such endorsement of men as the sole creators and guardians of culture, however, engenders a problem of its own—how to explain the significance of women writers whose very existence challenges the validity of this endorsement. The critical tradition of the so-called Heian women’s literature, a major constituent of the Japanese literary canon, can be meaningfully read as the reflection of scholars’ conceptual and logical contortions to accommodate the female authors within the framework of patriarchal ideology.
In this paper, I will analyze the Preface to Kokinshu, the first imperial anthology of Japanese court poetry (905 a.d.), as the earliest and foremost attempt to theorize and inscribe the significance of female authorship within the paradigm of culture/nature. This Preface mentions the legendary ninth-century poet Ono no Komachi as one of the Six Poetic Geniuses of Japanese poetic tradition, while identifying her as the inheritor of Lady Sotoori’s poetry of antiquity. This brief discussion has been valorized as the authoritative source for the subsequent conceptualization of female authorship as a natural extension of female sexuality.
I aim to reassess the significance of the Preface by demonstrating that the discursive strategies behind the presentation of Komachi were gender biased so as to glorify the patriarchal ideology.
Lynne Nakano, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
This paper focuses on the local civil organizations and "community volunteers" of a middle- to lower-middle income residential neighborhood in a Yokohama metropolitan district that have responded to government agencies’ requests that they organize as "communities." Government agencies promote the formation of caring, volunteer-oriented communities as a solution to national social problems that have emerged in spite of or because of material abundance. Volunteer groups provide a means of discussing local issues among residents living in diverse housing arrangements including a large public housing estate, private apartments, single-family homes and part-time farming households. Community volunteer work includes women and older men marginalized from the work force and those who have not achieved the standards of middle class success within the mainstream by giving them a recognized place in society and encouraging their work toward national objectives. At the same time, community groups provide a forum for criticizing mainstream institutions of family, school and corporation. Residents argue that their "community" should provide both moral and social solutions to the problems of affluence and the inadequacies of middle class institutions. The identity of "community volunteer" reproduces women’s roles as caregivers and men as organizers, and offers women and men opportunities to reformulate established gender and class identities.
Wei-hsin Yu, University of Chicago
This paper intends to explain the increase of middle-aged women re-entering the labor force and their concentration in "informal employment" in Japan. Despite a consistent tendency for Japanese women to withdraw from the labor force upon marriage or childbearing, the overall female labor force participation has increased steadily over the last decades. This seemingly paradoxical phenomenon is to a great extent attributed to the growth of middle-aged women’s re-entries into the labor force. It is also observed that the destinations of their re-entries are predominantly jobs of informal employment status, including self-employment, family enterprise work, part-time, temporary jobs, and home-based piece work.
The existing explanations of the phenomenon emphasize labor supply and demand conditions respectively. The ones focusing on the changes of labor supply do not explain why formal employment (i.e., regular, full-time paid employment) has been relatively unaffected by a growing labor supply of middle-aged women. The labor demand explanations usually highlight the increase of part-time, temporary jobs in the economy, but do not explain why the increase has not influenced other groups of workers to the same extent. I argue that, although both the labor supply of middle-aged women and the demand of part-time employment have increased, the two make a perfect match only when the practices of formal employment are extremely discriminative against older job seekers, married women (in particular mothers), and workers with discontinuous work experience. Moreover, tax law and child-care facilities provided by the state also encourage middle-aged women to look for informal employment. My analysis, using both quantitative survey data and in-depth personal interviews carried out in Tokyo and the adjacent areas, will support the arguments.