Course Description

 
Japanese women have been scripted by Western (male) imagination as gentle, self-effacing creatures. From their (re)emergence in the late19thcentury to their dominance in the late 20th, Japanese women writers have presented an image of their countrywomen as anything but demure. Struggling to define their voice against ever-shifting expectations and social contexts, the women they create in their fiction are valiant, if not at times violent. This course will examine the various manifestations of the female image in female-authored modern Japanese fiction.  Writers to be considered are Higuchi Ichiyô, Hirabayashi Taiko, Uno Chiyo, Enchi Fumiko, Yamada Eimi, and others. A selection of novels and shorter fiction will be available in English translation and students need not be familiar with Japanese.

Required Texts

Ariyoshi Sawako, The River Ki
Enchi Fumiko, The Waiting Years
Yukiko Tanaka, ed. To Live and to Write
Yukiko Tanaka, Unmapped Territories
Uno Chiyo, The Story of a Single Woman
Yoshimoto Banana, Kitchen
Paul Schalow and Janet Walker, ed. The Woman's Hand
 
 
 
 

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