Representations of male-male sexuality in Meiji-period literature.
Reichert, James Robert
1998
Abstract
During the Meiji period (1868-1912), the Japanese cultural landscape underwent a series of staggering transitions. This dissertation focuses on the changes that occurred in two particular realms of culture: literature and sexuality. Specifically, the dissertation looks at various literary representations of male-male sexuality that were circulated during the Meiji period. Despite some fundamental differences, all of these representations of male-male sexuality share one important characteristic; they exhibit a striking degree of hybridity. That is to say, each representation exists as a composite, simultaneously embodying a number of different, often conflicting, outlooks. My argument is conducted through close readings of a series of literary texts. The dissertation starts with an examination of an explosively popular work entitled Shizu no odamaki (date of composition unknown). In this chapter I demonstrate that the text's representation of male-male love weaves together elements borrowed from two distinct discursive traditions: the aristocratic tradition of courtly love and the samurai tradition of ethical discourse. The second chapter considers Okamoto Kisen's Sawamura Tanosuke akebono zoshi (1880). The depiction of male-male sexuality in this work is affected by its simultaneous reliance on a variety of conventional gesaku formulas. The next chapter looks at three works by the artist Yamada Bimyo: Wakashu sugata (1886), Musashino (1887) and Kocho (1889). A comparison of these works reveals a process of constant renegotiation among different responses to male-male love; in Wakashu sugata Bimyo relies heavily on the tropes of traditional nanshoku literature to augment his writing, only later to succumb to the belief that male-male love is an outmoded relic from the past. The eclectic writer Natsume Soseki is the subject of my fourth chapter. Uneasily brought together in his novel Nowaki (1907) are contradictory notions of male-male love derived from the Japanese samurai tradition, the idealistic poetry of Walt Whitman and fin-de-siecle rhetoric concerning degeneration. Mori Ogai's Vita Sexualis (1909) evidences a similar kind of hybridity. The narrative simultaneously associates male-male sexuality with samurai virility, boorish provincialism, and unnatural sexual pathology identified by Western scientific discourse. Through the cumulative analysis of these literary texts I attempt to demonstrate that Meiji representations of male- male sexuality invariably embody a dynamic of conflict. It is precisely this element of dissonance, I contend, that reflects the spirit of the period.Subjects
Japan Literature Male-male Sexuality Meiji Mori Ogai Natsume Soseki Okamoto Kisen Period Representations Yamada Bimyo
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