Bunron – Zeitschrift für literaturwissenschaftliche Japanforschung

The Island where Future Possibilities Bloom. Language, gender, and identity issues in Li Kotomi’s Higanbana ga saku shima

2024-09-18T12:05:22+00:00

Starting from the utopian label given to The Island where Spider Lilies Bloom (Higanbana ga saku shima, 2021), in this paper I shall analyse the language, gender and identity issues depicted in the novel to explain how they function in the economy of the story and how Li Kotomi uses them to explore the complexity of the individual and the collective. Higanbana ga saku shima is set on an anonymous island where the family system is deconstructed and there are no such things as mothers or fathers, and women called “noro” rule the community using a language exclusively for women. However, what at first glance seems to be a utopian society and a story of empowerment turns out to be another example of an exclusive society, where familiar, old tropes are flipped, but fail to create inclusivity. After exploring the societal constructions and clarifying the reasons for this “failure” with reference to the trope of “liminality,” I will take “failure” as a starting point to rethink the concept of utopia and explain how it functions as a basis for moving towards a “not-yet here” critical utopianism and queer futurism.

Glühwürmchen und Feuervogel – Zum Nexus von japanischer Lyrik und Seele bei Ōe Kenzaburō

2024-09-30T11:14:41+00:00

Ōe Kenzaburō was deeply influenced by Western writers such as William Blake and W. B. Yeats, but he was also an avid reader of Japanese literature, including premodern works as well as the folklorist Yanagita Kunio. In his short story “The Day Another Izumi Shikibu Was Born” (Mō hitori Izumi Shikibu ga umareta hi, 1984) Ōe creates a poetological discourse by inventing a tradition that evolves around the poems of Shikibu-san and is transmitted by the “great women” (ōi naru onna-tachi) of the village where he grew up in the forests of Shikoku. Within the mythical framework of this fictive tradition Japanese poetry is linked to the soul (tama/tamashii) – a topic frequently encountered in Ōe’s works since the 1970s. Another story by Ōe, “The Bird Surrounding Itself with Fire” (Hi o megurasu tori, 1991), discusses Itō Shizuo’s poem “Bush Warbler” (Uguisu, 1934) and its implications for a concept of the soul. The text includes a passage reminiscent of Izumi Shikibu’s poem in which she identifies fireflies with her own soul. While Ōe takes up Izumi Shikibu’s thought, he transforms it: the firefly becomes the narrator gazing upon a swarm of light that is his soul, but also exceeds the individual. According to an essay that Ōe wrote two years later, the story ends with a “bad ambiguity” (ashiki aimaisa), but another essay by Ōe published in 2011 suggests a much more positive interpretation. Although “soul” as a concept, as it figures in the texts discussed, defies a clear definition, it can be shown that Ōe is particularly concerned with how the souls of different persons relate to each other, especially the souls of his son and himself. Based on a comparative analysis of Ōe’s two stories, it is argued that Ōe regarded poetry as a medium of universal experience that creates new meaning in different situations.

Who is holding the keys? Authorship and the role of the reader in Itō Seikō’s Sonzai shinai shōsetsu and Back 2 Back

2024-10-12T16:26:36+00:00

This article examines the relationship between intertextuality and authorship in the creative oeuvre of contemporary Japanese writer Itō Seikō (born 1961), focusing on two short stories collections: Back 2 Back (2012), written collaboratively with philosopher Sasaki Ataru (born 1973), and Sonzai shinai shōsetsu (Stories that Do Not Exist, 2013). It provides a close overview of one particular story that appears in both collections under different titles – as story “Number Six” in Back 2 Back and “Atashi” in Sonzai shinai shōsetsu. The article argues that comparing the stories might shed some light on how they employ the concept of the death of the author. Both versions question the roles of the author and reader in interpreting a text but approach this theoretical issue differently. Story “Number Six” from Back 2 Back uses the images of a fictional author and reader as adults, highlighting the power inequality between them and portraying the reader as more powerful than the author. In contrast, “Atashi” employs a similar motif but inverts it humorously, making both the author and the reader appear equally clueless about their supposed roles. It accomplishes this by depicting them as children who mimic the same debate from a different angle and thus showcase its inherent fluidity. The article compares the interactions between fictional authors and readers in both stories through the lens of Roland Barthes’ concept of the death of the author. In this comparison, “Atashi” is perceived as a rewrite of story “Number Six.”