Lost Leaves

Introduction: Recovering Lost Leaves

Introduction Recovering Lost Leaves This emergence of a woman author is symbolic of the period but we will not deal with this aspect. —Kōsaka Masaaki, Japanese Thought in the Meiji Era, 1958 Re-vision—the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction—is for women more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival. Until we can understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves. —Adrienne Rich, “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision,” 1979 Mention women writers of the Meiji period (1868–1912), and most enthusiasts of Japanese literature immediately call to mind Higuchi Ichiyō (1872–1896), the promising young author who died at the age of twentyfour .1 Although most studies seek to establish alliances between Ichiyō and her Heian-era (794–1185) foremothers, Murasaki Shikibu and Sei Shōnagon,2 few acknowledge her association with her female contemporaries . Rather, Ichiyō is presented, much as her pen name implies, as a “single leaf” among male authors.3 Literary historians, both inside and outside Japan, dutifully describe her exchanges with her male counterparts, her association with the male literary coterie known as the Bungakukai (Literary World), and the admiration male critics expressed for her talent, which they believed transcended gender. “Conceal the author’s name,” says one contemporary of Ichiyō’s work, “and [a reader] would probably never guess it was written by a woman.”4 In his biographical study of the author, Robert Danly 1 quotes another critic: “She had as much talent as any man.”5 Consequently, Danly situates Ichiyō among her male peers to the near exclusion of her female contemporaries. But to suggest that Ichiyō be considered “as talented as any man” implies that being as talented as any woman is not quite talented enough. This kind of criticism renders women’s work not only secondary but peripheral. The only way a woman can earn recognition as a significant writer, therefore, is to transcend her sex. Higuchi Ichiyō must be transformed into an honorary man before she can be accepted for serious study. But there were other women writing during Ichiyō’s lifetime—more than most scholars of Japanese literature today realize. By the time Ichiyō died in 1896, more than twenty women were writing for publication in major periodicals and over one hundred works by female authors had been published. The better known among this group were Nakajima Shōen (1863–1901), Miyake Kaho (1868–1944), Koganei Kimiko (1871–1956), Wakamatsu Shizuko (1864–1896), Shimizu Shikin (or Shigin, 1868–1933), Tazawa Inafune (or Inabune, 1874–1896), and Kitada Usurai (1876–1900). Why have these women been so summarily dismissed from literary histories?6 Miyake Kaho is commonly described as the first woman writer in the modern era.7 Indeed, she is presented as “the female Tsubouchi Shōyō.” While Shōyō is not regarded as an important writer today, he is credited for his significant contributions to the literary field through his incisive essay on fiction, Shōsetsu shinzui (The Essence of the Novel, 1885). Why has his female counterpart been ignored? If Kaho is mentioned at all, she and her female contemporaries are generally described as negative foils by which to measure Ichiyō’s superior accomplishments. Kaho is dismissed as an imitator and hardly a serious writer.8 Wakamatsu Shizuko is brushed aside as a mere translator, an imitator of another sort. And Shimizu Shikin has been discredited as frivolous because she allowed marriage to silence her. In summarily removing all female competition from their presentations of Ichiyō, conventional literary histories fail to consider her contemporary reputation. Like Kaho, Shizuko, and Shikin she was categorized as a woman writer, or keishū sakka,9 and she was evaluated—as were they—according to gender-coded criteria. To ignore the cultural milieu within which Ichiyō worked desexualizes her writing in a way that is anachronistic, neutralizes her accomplishments, and accords to her a singularity that is unwarranted. Moreover, removing Ichiyō from the context of her female peers consigns an entire generation of writers—indeed, the first generation of modern Japanese women writers—to obscurity. In this study I restore this lost generation of women writers by recovering the female literary tradition that Ichiyō’s canonization has erased. My intent is not to minimize Ichiyō’s accomplishments. Rather, I seek to recover 2 Introduction [18.118.145.114] Project MUSE (2024-04-24 12...