The Female Image in Japanese Art and Literature YHU3232—Fall 2016 Wednesdays 9am-12pm, Classroom 1: RC1-G-04

Professor: Nozomi Naoi Email: [email protected] Office Hours: TBD, and by appointment Office: Elm RC2-01-01F

Course Description:

This course will examine the production, reception, and interpretation of the female imagery and representation of gender roles for the Japanese woman through visual images and literary texts from the eleventh to the twentieth century, with an emphasis towards the modern period. The role of gender and female imagery in Japanese art and literature will be discussed from various sources such as the 11th century world’s first novel, The Tale of Genji, by the female author Murasaki Shikibu, and its numerous pictorial representation as well as literary reference that continues on to the 20th century. Since the 17th century, images of beautiful women, known as bijin-ga, have been a staple genre in pictorial representation in Japanese art, which depicted contemporary lifestyle and women that showcased fashion, hairstyles, and modes of behavior of the time. During Japan’s modern era, emerging social types such as the ‘new women’ (atarashii onna) or ‘modern girl’ (modan gaaru) became both the object of discourse and the subject of visual and literary representation, creating a primary locus around which new debates of Westernization, modernity, and contemporary lifestyle and culture took place.

Visual images and literary texts have been selected according to themes: ranging from narrative handscrolls (emaki), paintings, prints, illustrations in magazines and fiction novels, posters for department stores, classical texts (Tale of Genji, Buddhist writings) and literary texts by renowned authors such as Tanizaki Jun’ichirō and Kawabata Yasunari. In addition, general

theoretical texts from a variety of academic disciplines will enrich class discussions by providing contexts for a historical, social, gender, art historical, and literary analysis.

Requirements and Evaluation:

This course involves lengthy reading assignments and in-depth discussions. For this reason, it is mandatory that all students read the assigned texts carefully and critically prior to each meeting. Please come prepared to share your thoughts and participate actively in discussion with the rest of the class.

Class Discussion Leaders: Each student will be paired with another student and will be assigned to lead class discussion by extracting and clarifying the main points of the text/topic, providing contextual background, and formulating questions or critiques to open up discussion. Please prepare a 1 page outline of your presentation to be distributed to the rest of the class and a power point file with a small set of images that will serve as a touchstone for our discussion. The images can be drawn from the week’s readings, but should also include other objects/texts that you think will serve as further information or interesting examples for our discussion.

Final Research Project: An annotated bibliography (2-4 pages) and presentation (10 minutes) on the chosen topic of your final research project will be required towards the end of the semester. Final research projects will involve individual research and can be in the form of a paper (5-8 pages) or other appropriate form of visual or multi-media product of comparable scope and sophistication (such as a self-designed digital exhibition, documentary film, and so forth), with prior approval from the professor. Students should consult early in the semester with the professor about the topic and scope of the project. (In the case of a non-paper final project, the student is required to submit a 1-2 page written report describing the project, the contextual background and research motives/questions driving the project, the process and preparation that went into the final product, and a brief analysis of the result along with the final production.)

Student Presentations: Each student will be required to do a presentation (10 minutes) on his or her topic of the final research project. Please prepare a 1-page outline of your presentation to be distributed to the rest of the class and a power point file (or other presentation method of your choosing).

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GRADING • All assignments must be completed in order to receive full credit for this course • Late penalties: late papers will be penalized 10% (one grade equivalent) per day.

45% Class Participation: (including attendance (10%), short writing exercises and assignments (20%), class discussion leader presentation (15%) and preparation) 10% Annotated Bibliography 20% Presentation on Final Research Project 25% Final Research Project

A range work demonstrates sophistication and depth in analysis; compelling and reflective expression; insightful and original perspectives; thoughtful and judicious reflection and inquiry.

B range work demonstrates good comprehension of the materials; earnest engagement; shows potential to develop further in expression or perspective.

C range work and below indicates scope for improvement in a number of aspects.

SEMINAR POLICIES Attendance: Attendance is mandatory. You are expected to attend all class meetings barring illness or other emergency. Your final grade will be deducted by one third (e.g. B+ to B) if you have two or more unexcused absences. Being late to class three times will count as an absence.

Active learning: Because of the interactive nature of the seminar, the use of laptops, cell phones, tablets, and other electronic devices during class is discouraged. Take thoughtful handwritten notes. Before coming to class, please make sure your cell phone is turned off or set to silent mode, and placed in your backpack. You may not receive or send text messages during class. Students who violate this policy will be asked to leave and receive no credit for the session. Exception: you may bring your own laptop if you are making a power-point presentation.

Academic integrity: Your submitted work must uphold the standards of academic integrity articulated in the student handbook. All written work submitted to me must be completely your own. Rewriting or paraphrasing information from online sources is a violation of the code of academic integrity.

The public domain: All papers you submit may be duplicated for the purposes of peer review and class discussion.

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Key texts (excerpts will be assigned throughout the semester):

• Joshua S. Mostow, Norman Bryson, and Marybeth Graybill, eds., Gender and Power in the Japanese Visual Field. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003. • Molony, Barbara and Kathleen Uno, eds. Gendering Modern Japanese History. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center: Distributed by Harvard University Press, 2005. • Suzuki, Michiko. Becoming modern women: love and female identity in prewar Japanese literature and culture. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2010. • Elise Tipton and John Clark. Being modern in Japan: culture and society from the 1910s to the 1930s. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2000.

COURSE SCHEDULE

Week 1 (Aug. 10) | First day of Class

Introduction to the course What is the “Female Image”

Week 2 (Aug. 17) | Introduction to The Tale of Genji: Continuing source of Female Imagery

Literary Texts: • Murasaki Shikibu, The tale of Genji (Genji Monogatari). Translation by Royall Tyler (New York: Viking, 2001). Book sections: Introduction [online pdf] and Chapter 4 “The Twilight Beauty (Yugao)” Visual Images: • Genji Scrolls (12th c.) • Harvard Genji Album (1510) Secondary Readings: • Akiyama Terukazu. 1990. “Women Painters of the Heian Court,” trans. and adapted by Maribeth Graybill. In Marsha Weidner, ed., Flowering in the Shadows: Women in the History of Chinese and Japanese Painting, 159-184. • Lippit, Yukio. 2008. “Figure and Facture in the Genji Scrolls.” In Haruo Shirane ed. Envisioning The Tale of Genji: Visuality, Gender, and Cultural Production. New York: Columbia University Press.

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Week 3 (Aug. 24) | What is “Gender” in Japanese art?

*NUS MUSEUM VISIT* 10am~

• Chino, Kaori. 2003. “Gender in Japanese Art.” In Mostow, et al, ed. Gender and Power in the Japanese Visual Field, 17-34. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. • Kano, Ayako. 2003. “Women? Japan? Art?: Chino Kaori and the Feminist Art History Debates.” Review of Japanese Culture and Society vol. 15 (December 2003): 25-38. • Inaga Shigemi. 2007. “A Commentary on Ayako Kano’s Review of the Feminist Art History Debates.” Review of Japanese Culture and Society vol. 19 (December 2007): 175-80. • Kano, Ayako. 2007. “Response to Shigemi Inaga’s Commentary.” Review of Japanese Culture and Society vol. 19 (December 2007): 181-84.

Week 4 (Aug. 31) | The Woman as Painter and Author: Issues of Feminine Modes

Literary Texts: • A Tale of Brief Slumbers, translated by Skord (1991) Visual Images: • A Tale of Brief Slumbers (Utatane sōshi), narrative handscroll (ca. 16th c) Secondary Readings: • Nochlin, Linda. (1971) “Why have there been no great women artists?” in Art and Sexual Politics: Women's Liberation, Women Artists, and Art History. Edited by Thomas B. Hess and Elizabeth C. Baker. New York, Macmillan 1973. • Pollock, Griselda. 1988. “Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity.” In Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and the Histories of Art, 50-90. London / New York: Routledge. • McCormick, Melissa. “Monochromatic Genji: The Hakubyō Tradition and Female Commentarial Culture.” In Haruo Shirane ed. Envisioning The Tale of Genji: Media, Gender, and Cultural Production. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.

Week 5 (Sept. 7) | Female Imagery and the “Buddhist Truth”

Literary Texts: • The Tale of Dōjōji, translated by Skord (1991) Visual Images: • Painting of the Six Realms, hanging scroll (12th c.): “The Realm of Humans” • Nine Stages of Decaying Corpse paintings (13th c.) • Lotus Sutra Scroll (12th c.) • The Tale of Dōjōji, narrative handscroll (16th c.) • The Scroll of Diseases and Deformities (Yamai no sōshi) (12th c, copied in late Edo period (1615-1868)): Kyoto National Museum owns nine illustrated sections: “Hermaphrodite,” “Woman with Cholera Nostras” (diarrhea and vomiting resembling the

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symptoms of cholera), “Man with Pubic Lice,” “Man with Many Anuses,” “Treatment of an Eye Disease,” “Man with Pyorrhea” (a gum disease that causes one to lose teeth), “Man with a Small Tongue,” “Palsy,” and “Woman with Halitosis,” which can be accessed through e-Museum (National Treasures and Important Cultural Properties of National Museums, Japan) http://www.emuseum.jp/detail/100995/000/000?mode=detail&d_lang=en&s_lang=en&cl ass=&title=&c_e=®ion=&era=¢ury=&cptype=&owner=&pos=1&num=5 Secondary Readings: • "Chapter four: Rokudo and Transient Reality" in Lee, Sherman E., Michael R. Cunningham, James T. Ulak, Cleveland Museum of Art. Reflections of reality in Japanese art. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1983. • Chin, Gail. 1998. “The Gender of the Buddhist Truth: The Female Corpse in a Group of Japanese Paintings.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 25:3/4 (1998): 277-317. Suggested Readings: • Skord Waters, Virginia. 1997. “Sex, Lies, and the Illustrated Scroll: The Dōjōji Engi Emaki.” Monumenta Nipponica 52 (1997): 59-84.

Reminder: You should have a clear idea about your Final Research Project by this point. If any of you are thinking about a non-paper project, make sure you have consulted with the instructor first! Be prepared to share the topic of your Final Research Project with the class on Sept. 14.

Week 6 (Sept. 14) | Drama and Desire: Beauties from the “Floating World”

Visual Images: • Woman Bathers, Hikone Screen (genre paintings, 17th c.) • Hishikawa Moronobu, Beauty Looking over her Shoulder (painting, 17th c.) • Suzuki Harunobu, Beauty Reading by the Window and others (ukiyo-e prints, 1760s to 1780s) • Kitagawa Utamaro, Ten Types in the Physiognomic Study of Women, ōkubi-e (ukiyo-e prints, 1780s~) Secondary Readings: • Pollack, David. 2003. “Marketing Desire: Advertising and Sexuality in Edo Literature, Drama, and Art.” (Chap. 5, 71-88) and Mostow, Joshua “The Gender of Wakashū and the Grammar of Desire” (49-70) in Joshua S. Mostow, Norman Bryson, and Marybeth Graybill, eds., Gender and Power in the Japanese Visual Field. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003. • Screech, Timon. 1999. Sex and the Floating World: Erotic Images in Japan, 1700-1820. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1999. Chapter 1 “Erotic Images, Pornography, Shunga and Their Use” and Chapter 2 “Time and Place in Edo Erotic Images.” • Davis, Julie Nelson. 2007. Utamaro and the Spectacle of Beauty. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.

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Sept. 21—Recess Week, No Class

Week 7 (Sept. 28) | The Tale of Genji (part 2): Pictorial Representation and the “Gaze”

Literary Texts: • Murasaki Shikibu, The tale of Genji (Genji Monogatari). Translation by Royall Tyler (New York: Viking, 2001). Book sections: Chapter 9 “Heart-to-Heart (Aoi) Visual Images: • Genji Scrolls (12th c.) • Harvard Genji Album (1510) Secondary Readings: • Mulvey, Laura. 1989. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” In Visual and Other Pleasures. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. Also in Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation, ed. Brian Wallis. New York: The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1995. + afterthoughts on this article. • Olin, Margaret. 1996. “Gaze.” In Critical Terms for Art History, ed. Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff, 318-329. Chicago: University of Chicago, second edition, 2003.

The Tale of Genji (part 3): Modern Interpretations

Literary Texts: • Mishima Yukio, The Lady Aoi, modern Noh play (1954) translated by Donald Keene in Five modern No plays. 1st Vintage International. New York: Vintage Books, 2009. Visual Images: • Nihonga images (20th c.) New Media (Anime and Manga) • Asaki Yumemishi by Yamato Waki (1979) [online access, https://ia600907.us.archive.org/15/items/manga_Asakiyumemishi-TheTaleOfGenji- v01/Asakiyumemishi-TheTaleOfGenji-v01.pdf

Reminder: Annotated Bibliography due next class (Oct. 5)

Week 8 (Oct. 5) | New Modes of Expression: Modernizing ‘Bodies’

Literary Texts: • Kawabata Yasunari. The Scarlet gang of Asakusa. Translation by Alisa Freedman. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2005. • Kawabata Yasunari. Corpse Introducer. Translation by Alisa Freedman. In Tokyo in transit: Japanese culture on the rails and road. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2011.

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Visual Images: • Kuroda Seiki, Wisdom, Impression, Sentiment (oil painting, c 1900), Lakeside (oil painting, 1897) and others Secondary Readings: • Alice Tseng, Kuroda Seiki’s ‘Morning Toilette’ on Exhibition in Modern Kyoto. The Art Bulletin 90, No. 3 (Sept. 2008): 417–440.

Annotated Bibliography due in class!

Week 9 (Oct. 12) | New Modes of Expression: Westernizing and Modernizing ‘Bodies’

Visual Images: • Kuroda Seiki, Wisdom, Impression, Sentiment (o il painting, c 1900), Lakeside (oil painting, 1897) and others • Yorozu Tetsugorō, Nude Beauty (oil painting, 1912), In Bathing Costume (oil painting, 1926), Veiled Figure (oil painting, 1925) and others • Kishida Ryūsei, Young Girl Standing (oil painting, 1923) and others Secondary Readings: • Bryson, Norman. “Westernizing Bodies: Women, Art, and Power in Meiji Yōga.”(89- 118) and Croissant, Doris. “Icons of Femininity: Japanese National Painting and the Paradox of Modernity.” (119-140) In Gender and Power in the Japanese Visual Field, edited by Joshua S. Mostow, Norman Bryson, and Maribeth Graybill. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003. • Mizusawa Tsutomu, “The Artists Start to Dance: The Changing Image of the Body in Art of the Taishō Period” (15-24) in Elise Tipton and John Clark. Being modern in Japan: culture and society from the 1910s to the 1930s. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2000. Suggested Readings: • Chap. 2 “Nude Beauty: A Modernist Critique” (43-74) in Alicia, Volk. In pursuit of universalism: Yorozu Tetsugorō and Japanese modern art. Berkeley:Washington, D.C.: University of California Press;Phillips Collection, 2010. • Mackie, Vera. Feminism in Modern Japan; Citizenship, Embodiment and Sexuality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Week 10 (Oct. 19) | Icons of Modernity: The “Modern Girl” (Moga)

Literary Texts: • Tanizaki Junʾichirō. Naomi (Chijin no Ai). Translation by Anthony H. Chambers (New York: Knopf: Distributed by Random House, 1985).* Secondary Readings: • Nolte, H. Sharon and Hastings, Ann Sally. “The Meiji State’s Policy Toward Women, 1890-1910” (151-174) and Laurel Rasplica Rodd, “Yosano Akiko and the Taishō Debate over the ‘New Woman’” (175-198) and Miriam Silverberg, “The Modern Girl as Militant”

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(239-266) In Recreating Japanese Women, 1600-1945, edited by Gail Lee Bernstein, 151-174. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. • Nozomi Naoi, “The Modern Beauty in Taishō Media.” In The Women of Shin Hanga: The Joseph and Judy Barker Collection of Early Twentieth-Century Japanese Prints, Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 2013, 23-42.

Week 11 (Oct. 26) | Icons of Modernity: The “Modern Girl” (Moga) (part 2)

Visual Images: • Nihonga paintings: Tsuchida Bakusen, Uemura Shōen, and others • Shin-hanga prints: Itō Shinsui, Kobayakawa Kiyoshi, Hashiguchi Goyō Secondary Readings: • Asato Ikeda, “Modern Girls and Militarism: Japanese-Style Machine-ist Paintings, 1935- 1940,” in Art and war in Japan and its empire, 1931-1960. Leiden: Brill, 2013, 91-110. • Ajioka Chiaki, “Hanga-Images on the Plate” (115-120) in in Modern boy modern girl: modernity in Japanese art 1910-1935. Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1998. Suggested Readings: • Allen Hockley, The Women of Shin Hanga: The Joseph and Judy Barker Collection of Early Twentieth-Century Japanese Prints. Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 2013. • Elise Tipton, “The Café: Contested Space of Modernity in Interwar Japan” (119-136) and Barbara Hamill Sato, “An Alternate Informant: Middle-Class Women and Mass Magazines in 1920s Japan” (137-154) in Elise Tipton and John Clark. Being modern in Japan: culture and society from the 1910s to the 1930s. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2000. • “Prologue: Women and the Reality of the Everyday” (1-12) and Chap. 1 “The Emergence of Agency: Women and Consumerism” (13-44) and Chap. 2 “The Modern Girl as a Representation of Consumer Culture” (45-77) in Sato, Barbara Hamill. The new Japanese woman: modernity, media, and women in interwar Japan. Asia-Pacific: culture, politics, and society. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003.

Student Presentations on Final Research Project (Session 1): The last 3 sessions of the course we will have the last hour dedicated to student presentations on their final projects. There will be 5-6 presenters per class, each student will be required to do a presentation (10 minutes) on his or her topic of the final research project. Please prepare a 1-page outline of your presentation to be distributed to the rest of the class and a power point file (or other presentation method of your choosing).

Week 12 (Nov. 2) | “Becoming Modern Women”: Love and Female Identity in Literature

Literary Texts (Modern Female Writers): • Yoshiya Nobuko (1896-1973) • Miyamoto Yuriko (1899-1951) • Okamoto Kanoko (1889-1939)

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Secondary Readings: • Suzuki, Michiko. Becoming modern women: love and female identity in prewar Japanese literature and culture. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2010. Book sections: • “Introduction: Becoming Female in Modernity/ Woman, Selfhood, and Love/ A Brief History of Love/ Bluestocking and Hiratsuka Raichō/ Modern Love Ideology/ Organization of Becoming Modern Women” (1-22) • “Yoshiya Nobuko and the Romance of Sisterhood” (34-64) • “Miyamoto Yuriko and the Nobuko Narratives” (79-106) • “Okamoto Kanoko and the Mythic Mother” (118-146)

Student Presentations on Final Research Project (Session 2):

Week 13 (Nov. 9) | New Markets and Media: Advertisement, Manga, and Sexual Identity

Literary Texts (Modern Female Writers): • The Rose of Versailles, translated by Frederik Schodt (Manga, 1983) [online source: http://www.goodmanga.net/rose_of_versailles/chapter/1/2]

Visual Images: • Mitsukoshi Department store posters • Takehisa Yumeji (prints, illustrations, 1920s) • Yoko Ono, Kusama Yayoi, Morimura Yasumasa, photographs by Mishima Yukio, Secondary Readings: • Gennifer Weisenfeld, “Japanese Modernism and Consumerism: Forging the New Artistic Field of ‘Shōgyō Bijutsu’ (Commercial Art)” (75-98) in Elise Tipton and John Clark. Being modern in Japan: culture and society from the 1910s to the 1930s. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2000. • Shamon, Deborah. 2007. “Revolutionary Romance: The Rose of Versailles and the Transformation of Shojo Manga.” Mechademia, vol. 2 (2007): 3-17. • Mackie (2005) “‘Understanding through the body’: The Masquerades of Mishima Yukio and Morimura Yasumasa” in R. Dasgupta & M. J. McLelland (eds), Genders, Transgenders and Sexualities in Japan, New York: Routledge, 126-144. Suggested Readings: • Elise Tipton, “Moving Up and Out: The ‘Shop Girl’ in Interwar Japan” (21-40) in Alisa Freedman and Laura Miller and Christine Reiko Yano. Modern girls on the go: gender, mobility, and labor in Japan. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2013. • Toku, Masami. 2007. “Shojo Manga! Girls’ Comics! A Mirror of Girls’ Dreams.” Mechademia, vol. 2 (2007): 19-32. • Aoyama, Tomoko. “Transgendering shōjo shōsetsu: Girls’ inter-text/sex-uality.” Chapt. 4, 49-64, in McLelland and Dasgupta eds., Genders, Transgenders and Sexualities in Japan.

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• Borggreen, Gunhild. 2003. “Gender in Contemporary Japanese Art.” Chapt. 10, 179-200, in Mostow, et al ed., Gender and Power.

Student Presentations on Final Research Project (Session 3):

Reminder: Final Research Projects due—November 22, 5pm

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