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Here& #39;s my hot take as a feminist scholar of Japanese lit on people gushing over Kawakami Mieko& #39;s critique of gender in her conversation with Murakami Haruki. As someone whose career is built on researching Japanese women writers, I feel upset for a few reasons: 1/10 https://twitter.com/lithub/status/1247532152322809858">https://twitter.com/lithub/st...
First, do make sure to read her work; don& #39;t define her through Murakami Haruki. Most importantly: Can we allow for the idea that there are serious limitations to views based on Eng-lang media? Kawakami is great, but can we praise her WITHOUT erasing other feminist work? 2/10
Many feminists have critiqued gender in Murakami Haruki& #39;s work. It& #39;s refreshing to read Kawakami& #39;s conversation with him, but why do we think it& #39;s so new? Why IS it new, to some people? This is related to structural problems in the translation industry & Japanese studies. 3/10
Rebecca Copeland @StlRebecca & others know of a tradition of women writers in Japan responding brilliantly to sexism w/critiques of male lit figures. Her translation vol Woman Critiqued has an excerpt from the famous『男流文学論』(On Male Lit), which has a chap on Murakami. 4/10
Similarly, The Economist wrote on Kawakami& #39;s Breast and Eggs, "Mieko Kawakami lobbed a literary grenade into the fusty, male-dominated world of Japanese fiction." Yes, but there& #39;s SO MUCH amazing work by women writers that& #39;s been challenging the Jp literary world for years!! 5/10
Why aren& #39;t people aware of more feminist Jp criticism & literature? Why aren& #39;t there more Eng translations of such writing? Why don& #39;t they know about Rebecca& #39;s volume? Translation takes time, patience, pays little, and often doesn& #39;t count for w/survival in the academy. 6/10
The publishing industry is most interested in sensation, speed, profit. Great work can& #39;t be translated if it& #39;s not deemed sexy. There is a big gap in history since there& #39;s more interest in translating Jp women writers now, but almost only in publishing newer writers. 7/10
Meanwhile, women scholars are often the ones pushing research & translation with Jp women writers, but we struggle w/everything bec. the academy is sexist. Maybe people don& #39;t always amplify our work bec. it contributes unattractive types of feminism (boring, tired, etc.). 8/10
For people complaining that they ONLY read Murakami Haruki as undergrads, that sucks, but we& #39;re out there doing our best. Kawakami Mieko has an amazing voice, but she isn& #39;t the only one. She is building on an incredible literary heritage that others are also contributing to. 9/10
In short: I don& #39;t expect people to know about Jp studies. But I hope you can celebrate Kawakami& #39;s deliciously incisive-yet-charming voice, then pause to think about what is erased from the narrative if we just share this piece and say, "Finally! Someone actually said it!" 10/10
To clarify, Kawakami& #39;s way of posing questions directly to Murakami was hugely refreshing for me, too. But it makes me sad to give her credit while not seeing her as part of a genealogy of women/feminists fighting really hard in their own ways in Jp lit, in different contexts.
対談 (talks betw. two ppl) are common in Japan, and it& #39;s too bad when women are "meek." But women only became very visible in the Jp lit scene in the 1990& #39;s. Many have been fetishized/criticized in sexist terms. I can& #39;t imagine what women have had to go through just to survive.
Kawakami Mieko has dealt with a lot, I& #39;m sure, but she& #39;s now a literary star in a time where "feminism" is a better known concept (if disliked). Also, she& #39;s one of the most incredibly charming people I& #39;ve ever encountered so it probably wasn& #39;t a terrible "confrontation" for him.
Anyway, my original intent was to relate structural issues (e.g. sexism) to what& #39;s translated (Jp fiction & feminist criticism), who& #39;s translated, whose voices are amplified (fiction + the academy). But ppl asked so here is a short list of suggestions for Jp women writers:
I definitely hope more people go on to read Kawakami Mieko& #39;s Breasts and Eggs!! She also has a really charming novella called Ms Ice Sandwich, trans. @quietmoonwave17, and if you Google, many short stories, mostly trans. by Hitomi Yoshio (also a scholarly expert on Kawakami).
Tawada Yōko& #39;s The Emissary (trans. Margaret Mitsutani) won the National Book Award in 2018 and depicts a transformed world (esp. relevant today). People are loving Ogawa Yōko& #39;s The Memory Police, but her collection Revenge is great if you like horror (both trans. Stephen Snyder).
Yu Miri is a Zainichi Korean writer whose book Tokyo Ueno Station offers important social critiqued (trans. @wrongsreversed). @sayakamurata became an international sensation w/Convenience Store Woman (trans. Ginny Tapley Takemori); I love this work and am planning to write on it.
Another "Kawakami" is Kawakami Hiromi: Her novel The Briefcase has beautiful descriptions of food & the seasons, but my fav is possibly its "sequel," the picture book Parade (trans. Allison Markin Powell), so read both! She is one of my favorite writers ever.
A few (slightly) less obvious suggestions: Ito Hiromi @itoseisakusho has been writing brilliant poetry since the 1970& #39;s, and you can read her poems in Killing Kanoko (trans. @jeffreyangles). She& #39;s also an amazing instructor at Waseda U, and I know several students who adore her.
Kono Taeko& #39;s collection Toddler Hunting is from the 1960& #39;s (trans. @japanonmymind), full of sadomasochism, and mind-blowing. Kanai Mieko& #39;s Rabbits (1973; trans. Phyllis Birnbaum in Rabbits, Crabs, Etc.) blew my mind (girls, rabbits, incest), but my students found it gross, oops.
Yoshimoto Banana @y_banana became a pop icon with her 1988 novel Kitchen, but I actually love her "girls& #39; love"-type (vaguely lesbian) stories in Asleep (trans. Michael Emmerich) & NP (trans. Ann Sherif).
Literary criticism: Woman Critiqued has a history in Japan of men commenting on women writers, and women responding. Lesbian writer Matsuura Rieko& #39;s "For a Gentle Castration" (trans. Amanda Seaman) and other essays are fantastic (also see her novel Big Toe P, trans. Emmerich).
Girl Reading Girl in Japan (ed. Aoyama & Hartley) is another volume I go to over & over again, on relationship betw. girls& #39; culture & women writers in Japan. Several trans. essays by Jp feminist scholars (Kawasaki& #39;s essay is hard but deliciously snarky in defense of Yoshimoto).
Still only in Japanese: Kawakami Mieko& #39;s 2017 女性号 (Women& #39;s Issue) special issue of the lit magazine Waseda Bungaku was INCREDIBLE (to me, bigger than her talks w/Murakami Haruki). As editor, she put together a who& #39;s-who of women& #39;s writing in Japan (essays, stories, poetry),
AND work by Virginia Woolf, Lucia Berlin, Sheng Keyi, Roxanne Gay, and others, with essays & round table discussions about feminism in Japan, & a reading guide for women writers/feminism. There& #39;s a bias towards popular feminism, but it& #39;s a beautiful, thought-provoking (pink) vol.
Would also like to plug work by @Li_Kotomi, an emerging writer who is doing something unprecedented with her writing on queer/non-Japanese minorities in Japan. Her debut novel『独り舞』is also available in Ch as《獨舞》, and her work is on its way to being trans. into English.
Finally: Early on, women translators/scholars played a large role in trans. Jp women& #39;s work into Eng, but often w/small presses, stuff now out of print. Other fiction & poetry comes out from academic presses, so you have to dig harder for that look boring, have little marketing.
You can still find some older collections of Jp women& #39;s writing in libraries or maybe PDFs floating around, if not on Amazon or your local store. @GrantaMag & @wwborders are wonderful about printing new Jp lit; there is surprisingly a lot of great stuff to read for free online.
