Monumenta Nipponica

O'Leary, Joseph Stephen.
Representing the Other in Modern Japanese Literature: A Critical Approach (review)
Monumenta Nipponica - Volume 62, Number 1, Spring 2007, pp. 131-134

Sophia University

1996, which challenges the normative attitude to heterosexuality and sets out to explore alternatives. The final chapter of the book, “Women Critiquing Men,” represents a strong counterpoint in the debate. In it Rebecca L. Copeland introduces the influential feminist attack launched by Ueno Chizuko, Ogura Chikako, and Tomioka Taeko against men talking about women, either as writers or as critics. The roundtable discussion of the prominent public intellectual Ueno, the gender-expert Ogura, and the writer Tomioka held in 1989 resulted in the publication in 1992 of the book Danryû bungakuron (On Men’s Literature), which aroused heated debate, but in fact contributed to a change in the discourse about women’s and men’s literature in Japan. This roundtable discussion involved a conscious attempt to use feminist analytic strategies instead of the “male-language” that had heretofore dominated literary criticism. The discussion started by applying the same essentialist views to male authors that had been applied previously to women, simply in order to demonstrate how absurd it was to reduce women’s writing to the sex of the author. The participants were from the outset criticized for their colloquial style in talking about (male) writers who, according to mainstream critics, merited more respect. The section translated here focuses on the discussion of Tanizaki Jun’ichirô. His work is described as having sexuality as its main theme, but as being disappointing...