Becoming modern women : love and female identity in prewar Japanese literature and culture / Michiko Suzuki.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Suzuki, Michiko

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Japanese fiction--Women authors--History and criticism.

Japanese fiction.

Japanese fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

Women in literature.

Love in literature.

Japanese fiction--Women authors.

Physical Description:

x, 233 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, [2010]

Summary:

Presenting an original examination of women writers and prewar ideology, this book breaks new ground in its investigation of love as a critical aspect of Japanese culture during the early to mid-twentieth century. As a literary and cultural history of love and female identity, Becoming Modern Women focuses on some-sex love, love marriage, and maternal love-new terms at that time. In doing so, it shows how the idea of "woman," within the context of a vibrant print culture, was constructed through the modern experience of love. Author Michiko Suzuki's work complements current scholarship on female identities such as "Modern Girl" and "New Woman," and interprets women's fiction in conjunction with nonfiction from a range of media-early feminist writing, sexology books, newspapers, best-selling love treatises, native ethnology, and historiography. While illuminating the ways in which women used and challenged ideas about love, Suzuki explores the historical and ideological shifts of the period, underscoring the broader connections between gender, modernity, and nationhood.

Contents:

1 Introduction 1

Becoming Female in Modernity 4

Woman, Selfhood, and Love 6

A Brief History of Love 8

Bluestocking and Hiratsuka Raich$ 10

Modern Love Ideology 13

Organization of Becoming Modern Women 15

Part 1 Girls and Virgins

2 Same-Sex Love 23

Introduction 23

Sexology Discourse 25

Bluestocking Discourse 29

Girls' Culture and Yoshiya Nobuko 32

3 Yoshiya Nobuko and the Romance of Sisterhood 34

Introduction 34

Flower Tales: Girls and Adolescent Love 35

Two Virgins in the Attic: Alternative Adulthood 42

Becoming a Virgin: Rewriting Female Development 50

"Abnormal" Virgins and Pure Wives: The Future of Same-Sex Love 54

Part 2 The Wife's Progress

4 Love Marriage Ideology 65

Introduction 65

Love Marriage Ideology: Hiratsuka Raichō and Ellen Key 68

Kuriyagawa Hakuson and the Byakuren Incident 70

Love Marriage Ideology, Women Writers, and Miyamoto Yuriko 75

5 Miyamoto Yuriko and the Nobuko Narratives 79

Introduction 79

Nobuko's Progress and Love Marriage Discourse 81

Marriage as Disease, Divorce as Cure 91

Erasing Love Marriage: The Bolshevik Wife 99

Part 3 Reinventing Motherhood

6 Maternal Love 107

Introduction 107

Hiratsuka Raichō and Takamure Itsue 108

Nationalism and Feminism 113

Maternal Love, Women Writers, and Okamoto Kanoko 115

7 Okamoto Kanoko and the Mythic Mother 118

Introduction 118

From "Mother and Child" to Wheel of Life 120

Becoming a Female Marebito 124

National Mythopoesis: Ataka's Tale 129

Becoming an Ur Mutter 135

Recreating Maternal Love 141.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780804761970

0804761973

9780804761987

0804761981

OCLC:

319794831