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Here's my hot take as a feminist scholar of Japanese lit on people gushing over Kawakami Mieko'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
First, do make sure to read her work; don'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's work. It's refreshing to read Kawakami's conversation with him, but why do we think it'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's Breast and Eggs, "Mieko Kawakami lobbed a literary grenade into the fusty, male-dominated world of Japanese fiction." Yes, but there's SO MUCH amazing work by women writers that's been challenging the Jp literary world for years!! 5/10
Why aren't people aware of more feminist Jp criticism & literature? Why aren't there more Eng translations of such writing? Why don't they know about Rebecca's volume? Translation takes time, patience, pays little, and often doesn't count for w/survival in the academy. 6/10
The publishing industry is most interested in sensation, speed, profit. Great work can't be translated if it's not deemed sexy. There is a big gap in history since there'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'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're out there doing our best. Kawakami Mieko has an amazing voice, but she isn't the only one. She is building on an incredible literary heritage that others are also contributing to. 9/10
In short: I don't expect people to know about Jp studies. But I hope you can celebrate Kawakami'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'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's too bad when women are "meek." But women only became very visible in the Jp lit scene in the 1990's. Many have been fetishized/criticized in sexist terms. I can't imagine what women have had to go through just to survive.
Kawakami Mieko has dealt with a lot, I'm sure, but she's now a literary star in a time where "feminism" is a better known concept (if disliked). Also, she's one of the most incredibly charming people I've ever encountered so it probably wasn't a terrible "confrontation" for him.
Anyway, my original intent was to relate structural issues (e.g. sexism) to what's translated (Jp fiction & feminist criticism), who'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'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'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'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's, and you can read her poems in Killing Kanoko (trans. @jeffreyangles). She's also an amazing instructor at Waseda U, and I know several students who adore her.
Kono Taeko's collection Toddler Hunting is from the 1960's (trans. @japanonmymind), full of sadomasochism, and mind-blowing. Kanai Mieko'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' 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'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' culture & women writers in Japan. Several trans. essays by Jp feminist scholars (Kawasaki's essay is hard but deliciously snarky in defense of Yoshimoto).
Still only in Japanese: Kawakami Mieko's 2017 女性号 (Women'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's-who of women'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's a bias towards popular feminism, but it'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'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'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.
Just a start since my suggestions are unremarkable for anyone who's in Jp studies & works on women writers, or translators. I'm not great at keeping track of things on Twitter, but if I didn't tag you & you're one of the above, please comment to tell ppl to follow you, thanks!
