Week 2 reading questions

Here are a few issues to think about as you read this week's material.

Structure

1. Is there a coherent plot line in Life of an Amorous Woman? What connects the episodes and chapters?

2. How is each episode structured? What is the role of the heroine in each episode?

3. What is the form of narration? What is the narrator's perspective and point of view? How would you describe the tone of the narrator?

4. I am particularly interested in Saikaku's use of first-person narration. Life of an Amorous Woman is a rare example of an Edo-period fictional narrative that employs the first person. While certain types of memoir, Buddhist confession, and diary utilize the first person, fictional texts from the period rarely do. Do you feel that the narrative voice corresponds to the heroine's voice? Are there episodes in which the first-person perspective helps to reveal insights about the heroine? Are there other parts of the narrative in which the first-person voice seems divorced from what we would assume to be the heroine's perspective? Why do you think Saikaku uses this technique? Is it consistently effective?

5. What is the purpose of the opening frame, in which a male narrator, along with two other male travelers, happens upon an old woman in a hermitage? How does this set up the subsequent lengthy lecture by the old woman?

Characterization

1. How is the protagonist of Life of an Amorous Woman depicted? What are the salient features of her character? Does she change? Does she possess an inner life? How does she interact with her environment and fellow characters? What role does sexuality play in her identity?

2. How does the text portray the other characters? Is there a qualitative difference between the presentation of these secondary characters and the protagonist? Is she depicted in a more complex manner? Or is the representation of her as superficial as it is of the other, less central characters?

3. What is the view of human nature and society presented through these characters?

Setting and Environment

1. How are different settings depicted in Life of an Amorous Woman? What features or issues does the narrator focus on? What is more important, the particular details of the setting or the narrator's story?

Gender and Sexuality

1. How is gender, particularly femininity, represented in Life of an Amorous Woman? Does the tale present a coherent vision of femininity? Are women depicted differently from men?

2. Do other factors (class, regional affiliation, profession) play a larger role than gender in shaping identity?

3. How should we interpret the many statements about the evil nature of women?

4. How are sexual roles and identities presented?

5. Is sexuality treated seriously? Morally? Sarcastically?

6. Is sex presented as a means of escaping a rigid social order? Or is it presented as a social construct that is bound by the same economic and social regulations that obtain toward other forms of social interaction?

7. Is it possible to see sex outside the existing social order?

8. Would you describe the view of sexuality as conservative, moralistic, comical, or realistic?

9. Does the vision of sexuality in Life of an Amorous Woman reveal a male bias of the author?

10. Do you think that the protagonist is meant to represent all women? Or is she depicted as an exceptional figure? Or is she just a device to string together sketches of different features of Edo sexual culture?

Instruction for Girls

1. Kaibara Ekiken's treatise is a highly conservative, Neo-Confucian statement on the moral development of women. As such, it expresses a very specific outlook that does not necessarily reflect the lived reality of anyone during the Edo period. Does Ekiken's view of women differ significantly from the one offered in Life of an Amorous Woman? Does it offer a morally determined vision of femininity in contrast to the amoral perspective presented in Saikaku's narrative? Do these works emerge out of the same worldview or do they represent radically different visions of women, their place in society, and their relationships with men?

2. This question is closely related to the previous one. In comparison to Instruction for Girls, which is a very ideologically coherent text, the ideological message of Life of an Amorous Woman is much more mixed. Saikaku's position on gender, for example, might be different from his stance on social class or orthodox morality. Taking Eduction for Girls as an internally coherent statement on Neo-Confucian values, how does this help to illuminate the contradictions and inconsistencies in Saikaku's narrative? What are the elements of Saikaku's narrative that can be interpreted as an affirmation of the Neo-Confucian views expressed in Education for Girls and what are the elements that deviate from this orthodox point of view?

Course syllabus

Week 1: Course Introduction

Week 2: Female Desire as Depicted in Early Modern Popular Fiction and Prints

Ivan Morris, “Introduction” (pdf)
Ihara Saikaku, The Life of an Amorous Woman (pdf)
Kaibara Ekiken, Instruction for Women (pdf)
Woodblock prints (class blog)

Week 3: Male-Male Love, Samurai, and Bon Vivants

Paul Schalow, “Introduction” (pdf)
Ihara Saikaku, The Great Mirror of Male Love, selections (pdf)

Week 4: Love Suicide, Puppet Theater, and Popular Buddhism

Donald Shively, “Introduction” to Love Suicide at Amijima (CR)
Chikamatsu Monzaemon, Love Suicide at Amijima (CR)
Chikamatsu Monzaemon, The Road to Tenjin Shrine (DVD)

Week 5: Female Desire, Feminism, and Japanese Modernism

William Gardner, “Mongrel Modernism: Hayashi Fumiko’s Hôrôki and Mass Culture” (pdf))
Hayashi Fumiko, Diary of a Vagabond (pdf)

Week 6: Female-Female Sexuality, the Takarazuka Revue, and Fan Culture

Makiko Yamanashi, “The Taishô Modern in the Female Domain of Girls’ Culture” (CR)
Dream Girls (DVD)
Yoshiya Nobuko, “Forget-Me-Not” (pdf)
Takarazuka performance clips (class blog)

Week 7: Love Suicide, Marriage, and Sexual Mania

Tanizaki Jun’ichirô, The Key
Ken Ito, “Writing as Power” (CR)

Week 8: The Gay Boom, Marriage, and Longing for Family

Michele Aaron, “New Queer Cinema” (CR)
Jonathan Hall, “Japan’s Progressive Sex” (CR)
Hashiguchi Ryôsuke, Hush! (DVD)

Week 9: Straight Women, Boys’ Love, and Shôjo Aesthetics

Cathy Camper, “Yaoi 101: Girls Love Boys’ Love” (pdf)
James Welker, “Beautiful, Borrowed, and Bent: Boys’ Love as Girls’ Love in Shôjo Manga” (pdf)
Murakami Maki, Gravitation
Anime clips (class blog)
Links to yaoi fan websites (class blog)

Week 10: Love Suicide, Politics, and Anarchy in Contemporary Japan

Adrienne Hurley, “Introduction”
Hoshino Tomoyuki, Lonely Hearts Killer

December 12: Final papers due

Some images

Here is a small preview of some of the material that we will cover in class.


Prostitutes and patrons in the licensed quarter,
illustration from Life of an Amorous Woman (1686)


A warrior, his lover, and a servant
illustration and page of text from Great Mirror of Male Love (1687)


Tokubei and Ohatsu as they prepare to commit suicide,
puppets performing the drama Love Suicide at Sonezaki (1703)


Moga (modern girls) circa 1920
cover for Girls Illustrated, Takabatake Koshô


Wife as object of desire,
illustration from Tanizaki Jun'ichirô's The Key (1956)


Takarazuka otokoyaku (performers of male roles),
Tuxedo Dance number (2005)


New vision of the nuclear family in Hashiguchi Ryôsuke's Hush! (2001)


Episode 1 of Murakami Maki's Gravitation


Reactionary model of Japanese masculinity,
critiqued by Hoshino Tomoyuki in Lonely Hearts Killer (2004)