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An Experiment in Gendered Reading: Enchi Fumiko's "A Bond for Two Lifetimes—Gleanings"

An Experiment in Gendered Reading: Enchi Fumiko's "A Bond for Two Lifetimes—Gleanings" Junko Umemoto Japanese women writers entered the canon of world literature about a decade ago, when Anglo-American critics, who had long been seeking to recover a feminine tradition of literature, extended their project to Japanese women's literature and began treating them from a gender studies point of view. The Woman's Hand: Gender and Theory in Japanese Women's Writing (1996), a seminal volume that emerged from a 1993 Rutgers conference on Japanese women writers, consists of essays anchored in the idea of gendered reading, and it proves how theories derived from Western discursive practice can be fruitfully applied to the analysis of Japanese women's writing--and, conversely, shows how Japanese women's writing can make a contribution to discussions of world literature by women writers.1 Enchi Fumiko (1905­86) is one of the Japanese women writers analyzed in the Rutgers conference volume. Her work stretches from the 1936 novel (Sambun ren'ai) [Her Love Diary] to an autobiographical trilogy finished in 1968 and includes the 1957 and 1958 novels (Onnazaka) (translated as The Waiting Years) and (Onnamen) (translated as Masks). Enchi did not reject Japanese traditional values, but she did try to anatomize women's bodies in terms that suggested sensuality and mystery. Her http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Comparative Literature Studies Penn State University Press

An Experiment in Gendered Reading: Enchi Fumiko's "A Bond for Two Lifetimes—Gleanings"

Umemoto, Junko.
Comparative Literature Studies , Volume 47 (3) – Oct 16, 2010
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Penn State University Press
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Abstract

Junko Umemoto Japanese women writers entered the canon of world literature about a decade ago, when Anglo-American critics, who had long been seeking to recover a feminine tradition of literature, extended their project to Japanese women's literature and began treating them from a gender studies point of view. The Woman's Hand: Gender and Theory in Japanese Women's Writing (1996), a seminal volume that emerged from a 1993 Rutgers conference on Japanese women writers, consists of essays anchored in the idea of gendered reading, and it proves how theories derived from Western discursive practice can be fruitfully applied to the analysis of Japanese women's writing--and, conversely, shows how Japanese women's writing can make a contribution to discussions of world literature by women writers.1 Enchi Fumiko (1905­86) is one of the Japanese women writers analyzed in the Rutgers conference volume. Her work stretches from the 1936 novel (Sambun ren'ai) [Her Love Diary] to an autobiographical trilogy finished in 1968 and includes the 1957 and 1958 novels (Onnazaka) (translated as The Waiting Years) and (Onnamen) (translated as Masks). Enchi did not reject Japanese traditional values, but she did try to anatomize women's bodies in terms that suggested sensuality and mystery. Her

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Comparative Literature Studies – Penn State University Press

Published: Oct 16, 2010

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