Japanese Women Writers: Twentieth Century Short Fiction

Japanese Women Writers: Twentieth Century Short Fiction PDF Author: Noriko Mizuta Lippit
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317466942
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
This collection includes translated works by Japanese women writers that deal with the experiences of modern women. The work of these women represents current feminist perception, imagination and thought. "Here are Japanese women in infinite and fascinating variety -- ardent lovers, lonely single women, political activists, betrayed wives, loyal wives, protective mothers, embittered mothers, devoted daughters. ... a new sense of the richness of Japanese women's experience, a new appreciation for feelings too long submerged". -- The New York Times Book Review

Japanese Women Writers: Twentieth Century Short Fiction

Japanese Women Writers: Twentieth Century Short Fiction PDF Author: Noriko Mizuta Lippit
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317466942
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
This collection includes translated works by Japanese women writers that deal with the experiences of modern women. The work of these women represents current feminist perception, imagination and thought. "Here are Japanese women in infinite and fascinating variety -- ardent lovers, lonely single women, political activists, betrayed wives, loyal wives, protective mothers, embittered mothers, devoted daughters. ... a new sense of the richness of Japanese women's experience, a new appreciation for feelings too long submerged". -- The New York Times Book Review

Lost Leaves

Lost Leaves PDF Author: Rebecca L. Copeland
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824863399
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Most Japanese literary historians have suggested that the Meiji Period (1868-1912) was devoid of women writers but for the brilliant exception of Higuchi Ichiyo (1872-1896). Rebecca Copeland challenges this claim by examining in detail the lives and literary careers of three of Ichiyo's peers, each representative of the diversity and ingenuity of the period: Miyake Kaho (1868-1944), Wakamatsu Shizuko (1864-1896), and Shimizu Shikin (1868-1933). In a carefully researched introduction, Copeland establishes the context for the development of female literary expression. She follows this with chapters on each of the women under consideration. Miyake Kaho, often regarded as the first woman writer of modern Japan, offers readers a vision of the female vitality that is often overlooked when discussing the Meiji era. Wakamatsu Shizuko, the most prominent female translator of her time, had a direct impact on the development of a modern written language for Japanese prose fiction. Shimizu Shikin reminds readers of the struggle women endured in their efforts to balance their creative interests with their social roles. Interspersed throughout are excerpts from works under discussion, most never before translated, offering an invaluable window into this forgotten world of women's writing.

The Other Women's Lib

The Other Women's Lib PDF Author: Julia C. Bullock
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824882512
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
The Other Women’s Lib provides the first systematic analysis of Japanese literary feminist discourse of the 1960s—a full decade before the "women’s lib" movement emerged in Japan. It highlights the work of three well-known female fiction writers of this generation (Kono Taeko, Takahashi Takako, and Kurahashi Yumiko) for their avant-garde literary challenges to dominant models of femininity. Focusing on four tropes persistently employed by these writers to protest oppressive gender stereotypes—the disciplinary masculine gaze, feminist misogyny, "odd bodies," and female homoeroticism—Julia Bullock brings to the fore their previously unrecognized theoretical contributions to second-wave radical feminist discourse. In all of these narrative strategies, the female body is viewed as both the object and instrument of engendering. Severing the discursive connection between bodily sex and gender is thus a primary objective of the narratives and a necessary first step toward a less restrictive vision of female subjectivity in modern Japan. The Other Women’s Lib further demonstrates that this "gender trouble" was historically embedded in the socioeconomic circumstances of the high-growth economy of the 1960s, when prosperity was underwritten by an increasingly conservative gendered division of labor that sought to confine women within feminine roles. Raised during the war to be "good wives and wise mothers" yet young enough to take advantage of the opportunities presented to them by Occupation-era reforms, the authors who fueled the 1960s boom in women’s literary publication staunchly resisted normative constructions of gender, crafting narratives that exposed or subverted hegemonic discourses of femininity that relegated women to the negative pole of a binary opposition to men. Their fictional heroines are unapologetically bad wives and even worse mothers; they are often wanton, excessive, or selfish and brazenly cynical with regard to traditional love, marriage, and motherhood. The Other Women’s Lib affords a cogent and incisive analysis of these texts as feminist philosophy in fictional form, arguing persuasively for the inclusion of such literary feminist discourse in the broader history of Japanese feminist theoretical development. It will be accessible to undergraduate audiences and deeply stimulating to scholars and others interested in gender and culture in postwar Japan, Japanese women writers, or Japanese feminism.

The Diving Pool

The Diving Pool PDF Author: Yoko Ogawa
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 1429924950
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
The first major English translation of one of contemporary Japan's bestselling and most celebrated authors From Akutagawa Award-winning author Yoko Ogawa comes a haunting trio of novellas about love, fertility, obsession, and how even the most innocent gestures may contain a hairline crack of cruel intent. A lonely teenage girl falls in love with her foster brother as she watches him leap from a high diving board into a pool--a peculiar infatuation that sends unexpected ripples through her life. A young woman records the daily moods of her pregnant sister in a diary, taking meticulous note of a pregnancy that may or may not be a hallucination--but whose hallucination is it, hers or her sister's? A woman nostalgically visits her old college dormitory on the outskirts of Tokyo, a boarding house run by a mysterious triple amputee with one leg. Hauntingly spare, beautiful, and twisted, The Diving Pool is a disquieting and at times darkly humorous collection of novellas about normal people who suddenly discover their own dark possibilities.

Inside and Other Short Fiction

Inside and Other Short Fiction PDF Author: Cathy Layne
Publisher: Planeta Publishing
ISBN: 9784770030061
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
"These eight short stories explore the issue of female identity in a rapidly changing society, where women have unprecedented sexual and economic freedom. From teens to fifties; married, single, divorced; the high school girl, the career woman, the sex worker, the housewife, the mother - this anthology deals frankly and explicitly with a broad range of women's experiences, and showcases the very best of recent writing by Japanese women."--BOOK JACKET.

Japanese Women Writers: Twentieth Century Short Fiction

Japanese Women Writers: Twentieth Century Short Fiction PDF Author: Noriko Mizuta Lippit
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317466934
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 455

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Book Description
This collection includes translated works by Japanese women writers that deal with the experiences of modern women. The work of these women represents current feminist perception, imagination and thought. "Here are Japanese women in infinite and fascinating variety -- ardent lovers, lonely single women, political activists, betrayed wives, loyal wives, protective mothers, embittered mothers, devoted daughters. ... a new sense of the richness of Japanese women's experience, a new appreciation for feelings too long submerged". -- The New York Times Book Review

Age of Shojo

Age of Shojo PDF Author: Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438473923
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Examines the role that Japanese girls’ magazine culture played during the twentieth century in the creation and use of the notion of shōjo, the cultural identity of adolescent Japanese girls. Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase examines the role that magazines have played in the creation and development of the concept of shōjo, the modern cultural identity of adolescent Japanese girls. Cloaking their ideas in the pages of girls’ magazines, writers could effectively express their desires for freedom from and resistance against oppressive cultural conventions, and their shōjo characters’ “immature” qualities and social marginality gave them the power to express their thoughts without worrying about the reaction of authorities. Dollase details the transformation of Japanese girls’ fiction from the 1900s to the 1980s by discussing the adaptation of Western stories, including Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, in the Meiji period; the emergence of young female writers in the 1910s and the flourishing girls’ fiction era of the 1920s and 1930s; the changes wrought by state interference during the war; and the new era of empowered postwar fiction. The book highlights seminal author Yoshiya Nobuko’s dreamy fantasies and Kitagawa Chiyo’s social realism, Morita Tama’s autobiographical feminism, the contributions of Nobel Prize–winning author Kawabata Yasunari, and the humorous modern fiction of Himuro Saeko and Tanabe Seiko. Using girls’ perspectives, these authors addressed social topics such as education, same-sex love, feminism, and socialism. The age of shōjo, which began at the turn of the twentieth century, continues to nurture new generations of writers and entice audiences beyond age, gender, and nationality. Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase is Associate Professor of Japanese at Vassar College.

Japanese Women Novelists in the 20th Century

Japanese Women Novelists in the 20th Century PDF Author: Sachiko Shibata Schierbeck
Publisher: Museum Tusculanum Press
ISBN: 9788772892689
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
It was not until Kawabata Yasunari won the 1968 Nobel Prize for literature that the average Western reader became aware of contemporary Japanese literature. A few translations of writings by Japanese women have appeared lately, yet the West remains largely ignorant of this wide field. In this book Sachiko Schierbeck profiles the 104 female winners of prestigious literary prizes in Japan since the beginning of the century. It contains summaries of their selected works, and a bibliography of works translated into Western languages from 1900 to 1993. These works give insight into the minds and hearts of Japanese women and draw a truer picture of the conditions of Japanese community life than any sociological study would present. Schierbeck's 104 biographies constitute a useful reference work not only to students of literature but to anyone with an interest in women's studies, history or sociology.

More Stories by Japanese Women Writers: An Anthology

More Stories by Japanese Women Writers: An Anthology PDF Author: Kyoko Siden
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317464362
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
This anthology introduces sixteen modern Japanese women writers spanning a century in time and a wide range of life circumstances and literary styles. No other collection offers usch a diversity of women's voices

Sexuality, Maternity, and (Re)productive Futures

Sexuality, Maternity, and (Re)productive Futures PDF Author: Kazue Harada
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004468846
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Sexuality, Maternity, and (Re)productive Futures explores how contemporary Japanese female speculative fiction writers have challenged historical inequalities of sex, gender difference, and family roles by imagining alternative worlds where sexes are fluid and childbearing crosses the boundaries of male/female, biological/bioengineered, and human/nonhuman.