Gender, Love and Text in the Early Writings of Kanai Mieko Hannah Lucy Elizabeth Tamura Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds White Rose East Asian Centre School of East Asian Studies, School of Languages, Cultures and Societies March 2015 ii The candidate confirms that the worK submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the worK of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acKnowledgement. © 2014 The University of Leeds and Hannah Lucy Elizabeth Tamura iii Acknowledgements The first three years of this degree was fully funded by a postgraduate research scholarship from WREAC-ESRC (White Rose East Asian Centre – Economic and Social Research Council). Many thanks go to JFEC (Japan Foundation Endowment Committee) and BAJS (British Association for Japanese Studies) John Crump Studentship for funding maintenance costs during the final year and to GBSF (Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation) for funding a field-trip to check rare sources in Japan in July 2014. I have many people to thanK for the completion of this thesis. It is very doubtful that I would have pursued my love of Japanese literature had I not found my MA classes with Professor Drew Gerstle and Dr Stephen Dodd at SOAS so enjoyable. It was in Steve’s seminars and lectures that I first encountered writers such as Izumi KyōKa, NaKagami Kenji, Kurahashi YumiKo, and Kanai Mieko (whose short story ‘Usagi’, my class thoroughly delighted in translating together). It is also owing to Steve’s advice and guidance that I undertook a two-year research period at Waseda University with a Japanese government funded scholarship programme where I conducted much of my preliminary research for my thesis. During these two years, I attended the MA and PhD seminars of Professor Chiba Shunji and Dr Kanai Keiko, who both showed great consideration in always including me in their class discussions and presentations. My life in Tokyo would not have been anywhere near as pleasurable as it was had I not met Dr Rieko Suzuki, to whom I send huge thanks for being such a great companion and for always being ready to go for emergency glasses of wine at our favourite bar. Many thanks go to Professor Gaye Rowley for offering a stable and sane haven in her office in the Law Department at Waseda. I also send thanks to my senpai, Dr Daniela Moro, who helped me navigate my way through university life in Japan, always creating a fun and mutually supportive atmosphere. For the duration of my PhD, I wish to thanK my supervisor Dr Irena Hayter for taKing me under her wing, for her Keen theoretical Knowledge, her eye for detail, and for her continuing encouragement. Many thanks too, to my second supervisor, Professor Margaret AtacK, for her expert advice on French theorists and her precision feedback on Chapter Three at very late notice. I am most grateful to Dr Kyoko Hoshiyama, Dr Jasper Sharp, Rumi Hara, Vicky Young, Michiko Suzuki, and Maria Roemer for their companionship and support. Particular thanks go to Jasper for divulging his Knowledge of 1960s iv Japanese avant-garde film over several coffees and beers (not to mention for lending me a load of DVDs). It would not have been possible to complete this thesis without the support of my family. In the fourth year, my parents gave me bacK my old room in the attic so that I could finish writing up on a shoestring budget, and in the month before submission, they cheerfully minded my daughter for most of the day almost every day. I cannot thanK them enough. I dedicate this thesis to them, my partner Hugh, my daughter Florence and my late husband, Soshi Tamura. Finally, I must here thanK Soshi’s parents, Yoko and Iwao, for their long-standing support of me, which has often gone over and above the call of duty, and humbles me deeply. This thesis is theirs too. v Abstract This thesis examines and contextualises the early writings of Kanai Mieko, concentrating on the ways in which they instigate challenges to conventional inscriptions of gender, love, and text through a deployment of avant-garde narrative techniques. The first chapter argues that Kanai’s early writings interrogate and problematise conventional inscriptions of identity and gender: her short stories ‘Rabbits’ and ‘Rotting Meat’ borrow the form of paradoxical concepts that arise out of various surrealist avant-garde theories (such as OKamoto’s polaroppositionalism and SaKaguchi’s ‘Discourse on Decadence’) and can be read as a commentary upon the collective endeavours by contemporary feminists and women writers to create a written ‘feminine’. The second chapter further explores the subversive potential of Kanai’s writings. It argues that Kanai’s debut novella, Love Life, addresses the crisis of representation of the late 1960s by constructing two constellatory matrices of literary meaning: Ai-body-presence and F-narrative-absence. The first of these matrices, Ai-body-presence, is discernible in the inscription of the protagonist Ai’s physical origin as abject and can be read as a specific critique and enactment of how the crisis of representation affected the female body. The second, F-narrative-absence, is present in Ai’s attempts to inscribe her absent husband F, enabling her to pursue an understanding of what it means to love. The final chapter examines another matrix of literary meaning in Kanai’s writings in which text is described as if it is a body possessed of a consciousness, which Kanai herself refers to in her essay, ‘Text/Reality/The Body’, as the ‘corporeal text’. It contends that the ‘corporeal text’ acts as a challenge to conventional understandings of both the relationship between body and consciousness, and between the reader and a given text. In so doing, it pursues a deliberate textual strategy to transform the reader into an active creator of meaning. vi Table of Contents Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................... iii Abstract .............................................................................................................................. v Table of Contents ........................................................................................................... vi Notes .................................................................................................................................. vii Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter One: Reading 'Rabbits' and 'Rotting Meat' Through the Paradoxes of Surrealism .................................................................................. 15 1.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 15 1.2 Kanai's Early Critique of Joseiron ........................................................................ 19 1.3 Kanai's Literary Criticism of Gender Categories ........................................... 33 1.4 Reading 'Rabbits' as a Polaropposionalist Text ............................................ 60 1.5 Reading 'Rotting Meat' against 'Discourse on Decadence' ....................... 83 1.6 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 92 Chapter Two: Matrices of Meaning in Love Life ................................................. 97 2.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 97 2.2 The Dazai Osamu Prize Committee ................................................................. 101 2.3 Ai-Body-Presence .................................................................................................... 114 2.4 F-Narrative-Absence .............................................................................................. 143 2.5 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 159 Chapter Three: The Corporeal Text .................................................................... 165 3.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 165 3.2 Towards a Theory of Corporeality ................................................................... 166 3.3 Butō, and the Dancing-Girl-in-Pain .................................................................. 175 3.4 Text/Reality/The Body ......................................................................................... 187 2.5 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 232 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 237 Bibliography ................................................................................................................ 243 Appendix: The Story of the Inflated Man (A Translation of 'Kūki otoko no hanashi') ........................................................................................... 261 vii Notes Translations of Japanese-language sources are my own unless otherwise indicated. Japanese titles are followed by English translations in brackets