Women in Modern Japanese Literature

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Authors’ Perspective
Similarities
Differences
Conclusions
Works Cited

Introduction

Literature is a rather specific matter for any kind of research. It is a form of art that cannot display any boundaries or limits. Literature is a form of expression of personal ideas and emotions of the author, which is always combined with certain national coloring of literary works in this or that country. Thus, if the Japanese literature is under consideration, not only the literary side of the matter should be taken into account but the socio-cultural factors that influenced the works of Japanese writers are to be analyzed. This very research paper will deal with the comparative analysis of the women writers in the Japanese literature. The authors chosen for this work are Tomioka Taeko and her “Family in Hell”, Yamamoto Michiko with her “The Man Who Cut the Grass”, Takahashi Takako’s “Doll Love” and Tsushima Yuko’s work “A Bed of Grass”. The aim of the present paper is to find out the reasons for writing these works, their implications and major similarities and differences. This all will help the research to see the role of women in the Japanese literature.

Authors’ Perspective

To start with, it is necessary to take a brief look at the authors and their biographical data. This will be of help in further understanding of their work and the inspirations for them. Thus, Tomioka Taeko was born in 1935 and experienced severe hardships in her life. Her father left the family when Tomioka was a child, and her mother had to bring her up alone. Further on, Tomioka’s own life developed in the same direction – the man she loved took her to the USA but there left her for another affection of his giving her no money or other means for living. Drawing from these events, it is clear why the topics of difficulties and problems women can face in life are central for her works. The story under consideration, as well as other works by Taeko, is autobiographical in its essence (Taeko, 1974). Although names of characters are changed and setting is different, readers can see that the author describes her own life for such a deep reflection of inner world of characters, the look inside of their emotional states is possible only for the person who speaks of him/herself.

The same is true about Yamamoto Michiko whose story, as well as the bulk of her creations, is concerned with the topic of loneliness of women who devotedly follow their husbands but have to take up lives of housewives and spend years seeing nothing but the yard from their windows, etc. Yamamoto herself has experienced such a fate of a housewife when her husband moved for Australia and later for the US for work and she had to go with him. Her story “The Man Who Cut the Grass” is the manifestation of the wrongness of the situation when women are confined to their homes. At the same time, in this work Michiko displays understanding of the necessity of such a state of things as her husband, as many other people in the world, has to earn money for their family (Michiko, 1975). Thus, Michiko’s work is rather autobiographical to some extent, and is based on the eternal conflict of people’s wishes and demands of situation.

However, the life of Takahashi Takako proves that issues faced by the two previously considered authors are not the most complicated ones. Takahashi Takako, born in 1932, started her career as a writer when her husband was still alive, but his early death transformed her creative work inalterably – pessimism, grieve and permanent wish to escape from the problems to some unknown place are central points of her works. “Doll Love” is one of the brightest examples of Takako’s work where certain autobiographical features can also be noticed. Her main character is also faced with the deaths of her boyfriend and husband who commit suicides, so she decides that her destiny is to bring death to people. She wants to escape from all her problems and finds relief in her dreams, in which the implicit desire of the author to be far away from her troubles can be observed (Takako, 1976).

Moreover, another aspect of death and its meaning in life is considered by Tsushima Yuko in her works, and in particular in “A Bed of Grass”. The author has lost her son as a result of an accident and her works are filled with grieve and, as it might be supposed, with trying to receive excuse from her son for that she could not save him. The work by Yuko to be considered in this paper is one of the brightest examples of her prose, and it can be observed by the readers that personal concern of the author about her characters manifests that the story was inspired by her own life and by her own tragedies (Yuko, 1976). Thus, it is clear that the authors under consideration base their work on their own experiences which makes them rather valuable for the world’s literature. Consequently, certain similarities and differences can be found in those works.

Similarities

To start up with the major correlating points of the four stories analyzed, it is necessary to state that their main commonalty is that their authors are women. Japanese literature is a complicated phenomenon and women are not numerous in it. However, in contrast to European countries or other Asian states, in the Japanese society women trying to express their ideas through literature are not subject to discrimination or suppression. Japanese customs and traditions explain this by their tolerant attitude and appreciation of women in the society. Drawing from this, if a work is written by a woman writer, it is a special piece of the Japanese literature, and the works under analysis are united by this principle.

Another similarity of the works under analysis is their dedication to similar topics, and namely to the issues that women from different families and social classes have to face on their life path. For instance, Tomioka Taeko’s story depicts the hardships of the life a young girl who lived in a small room with her husband and his mother. This was hell for her and she finally released herself from it by leaving her husband (Taeko, 140). Michiko, at the same time, ponders upon the hardships of a life of a housewife who sees nothing but her kitchen and the street out of her home’s window (Michiko, 179). Moreover, the works by Takako and Yuko deal with the topic of death and the difficulties women face when left without their breadwinners and beloved people. The former work deals exactly with the life of a woman who lost her husband and can not stand the moral pressure she is subject to, while the latter story tells the reader about the mother who lost her child (Takako, 1976; Yuko, 1976). Although, at the first sight the topics of the stories are rather different, it is obvious at the closer look at these works that the leading idea is the same, and it can not be referred to as feminist one. It is the reflection of the role of women in the society, their emotional state and inner conflicts that arise from losing close people or sacrificing something for their sake.

Thus, Mayo, Michiko’s protagonist, spent hours by the window waiting for her husband: “Mayo put her forehead on the windowpane and stared at the field where the dense grass was still growing.” (Michiko, 179) Nahoko, the protagonist of Taeko’s story, had to live with her husband’s mother and “to make matter worse, the couple lived in a nine-foot-square room in a sort of an outbuilding behind the house in the business district.” (Taeko, 141). His mother confused her name with the name of his former wife Shinako, always told them how they had to live and organize their family, etc. The unknown narrator of the story by Takako had to escape from her city after her husband’s death (Takako, 197). Her life become centered around the hero of her dreams which helped her to find oblivion from her life troubles and tragedies, while Yuko’s character Kumi suffered from fear of getting old and dying alone (Yuko, 252).

In the examples of all these people, the similar tragedy can be observed – the tragedy of destruction of the common way of life when a husband dies or a father leaves his family. Despite the fact that these tragedies seem to be different their very presence in the lives of the main characters of the stories constitutes their similarity. This is also seen in the linguistic and stylistic contexts of the four stories under analysis. The use of narration, enumeration of details of the settings of the stories, paramount importance attributed to the role of dialogue in disclosing the main conflict and the main problem of the story are all the pieces of evidence to this fact. At the same time, no specific language means, like lexical units with negative connotation or descriptions of stressful situations, are used by the authors in their stories. This is the tool that all the four authors used to picture their stories as real life occurrences. In real life tragedies happen without warning, and the authors under analysis reflected this skillfully in their works: “The real estate man was arrested without much surveillance. At that time as well, the house had been deadly silent.” (Michiko, 185).

Differences

However, substantial differences can be observed between the four stories by the Japanese women writers. This differences concern the plot of the stories, their main problems and themes, as well as the means and instruments used by their authors to express their idea. Accordingly, the differences between the stories are found in their major topics, as for example Michilo’s story depicts the life of a woman who observes the events that take place around her from the window of her house while she is a housewife and has to prepare everything before her husband comes home from work (Michiko, 179). At the same time, “Doll Love” by Takako depicts the collapse of a woman’s inner world after the death of her husband. This, finally, results in mere insanity of the main character that loses the line between reality and her dreams (Takako, 1976).

Furthermore, the protagonists of the stories by Yuko and Taeko can be viewed as feminists. Taeko’s main character, Nahako, decides her life herself by leaving her husband and his mother in their flat and moving to the next stage of her life (Taeko, 176 – 177). At the same time, “A Bed of Grass” can be interpreted as a work of the feminist literature due to the situation when a woman has to become the head of her family after losing her husband. She has to take up all the responsibility and care for her child by herself (Yuko, 1976). However, taking into account the peculiarities of the Japanese culture, where women have never been dissatisfied with their social position, it seems unreasonable to claim Yuko’s connection to feminism. It is more likely to be a story about the self-establishment of a woman and about her fear to fail. Thus, compared to the first two stories, the last two are different in their feminist coloring.

Moreover, the differences between the stories lie also in the linguistic means of their representation. In other words, the styles of authors are different and this makes their stories look accordingly. For example, Michiko’s story is delivered from the third person, i. e. the so-called omniscient narrator, who is impartial to the characters and objective in judgements (Michiko, 1975). Also, narration is used by Michiko as a major means of story-telling, while Taeko and Yuko make use of dialogues as instruments of the plot development and character introduction (Taeko, 1976; Yuko, 1976). As contrasted to the other three stories, Takako’s work is the combination of narration and dialogues that are sometimes real and sometimes take place in the dreams of the main heroine of the story. By this, the author copes with the task of creating the atmosphere of oblivion and illusion in which the protagonist of the story wants to live. Thus, all the considered differences between the stories under consideration prove the originality of the authors and their styles and ideas.

Conclusions

To make the respective conclusion to this research paper, it is necessary to state that the works analyzed in this research paper are masterpieces of the Japanese literature. They touch the topics that are of vital importance for the society and reflect the significant place that women writers take among the literary creators of Japan. The stories by Tomioka Taeko, Yamamoto Michiko, Takahashi Takako and Tsushima Yuko consider the different aspects of problems and hardships that women have to face when left by fathers or husbands, or after deaths of their beloved persons, etc. The stories analyzed have the above mentioned similar and different points but their overall effect on the reader is rather positives. Short stories by the Japanese women writers are valuable pieces of literature as a sphere of social life of human beings.

Works Cited

Tomioka Taeko. “Family in Hell” (1974). This Kind of Woman: Ten Stories by Japanese Women Writers, 1960-1976. Tanaka, Yukiko and Elizabeth Hanson, 1982. pp. 141 – 177.

Yamamoto Michiko. “The Man Who Cut the Grass” (1975). This Kind of Woman: Ten Stories by Japanese Women Writers, 1960-1976. Tanaka, Yukiko and Elizabeth Hanson, 1982. pp. 179 – 195.

Takahashi Takako. “Doll Love” (1976). This Kind of Woman: Ten Stories by Japanese Women Writers, 1960-1976. Tanaka, Yukiko and Elizabeth Hanson, 1982. pp. 197 – 225.

Tsushima Yuko. “A Bed of Grass” (1976). This Kind of Woman: Ten Stories by Japanese Women Writers, 1960-1976. Tanaka, Yukiko and Elizabeth Hanson, 1982. pp. 225 – 310.

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