Tamura Toshiko's Literary World

Tamura Toshiko, active during the end of Meiji and the Taisho period, is the firstprofessional women writer in Japanese literary world. Her representative worksincluding Desistance, Blood, A Woman Writer，Painted Lips of A Mummy, Her Lifeattracted much attention at the very beginning of publication. At the time when writerimplied the profession of men, Tamura Toshiko, as a women writer, was one of treasurepieces in pantheon, becoming the beloved writer of that time. However, Tamura Toshikowas just like a meteor, fading after the year the1918when she left Japan. Therefore, shewas not narrated in any Japanese literary history until the Collected Works of TamuraToshiko (Book III) compiled by Ariko Kurosawa and Kei Hasegawa Hasegawa fromDecember,1987to May,1988, and then the sealed women writer come back to thereaders’ sight. This paper is to reanalyze the works of Tamura Toshiko, giving herspeech power of deconstruction in traditional literary history, digging the works writtenby the forgotten women writers, constructing the necessary position of female literary.This paper focuses on “the time of Tamura Toshiko”, that is, using “TamuraToshiko” as a name to publish works during the period from1910to1918. This paperfocuses on the period lies in two reasons. Stylistically, it is transitional period form herstyle’s exploration to the cohesion between her speech and text. From the content, shegets rid of the simple and superficialness of her early time works to achieve the stable,abundant, multi-layered and meaningful works. The author is close to the works ofTamura Toshiko from two points. Firstly, Tamura Toshiko expressed the special state offemale through body narrative (writing based on the physical experience of female).Female body is the root to achieve connotation and meaning for Tamura Toshiko’sworks, becoming the main point to express and display self for writers. Secondly, howdid Tamura Toshiko analyze the deep social construction leading to the state that femalewas passive, weak and even fragmentized through the description of the female livingstate both in family and society. This paper intends to illustrate from the introductionand four chapters.In the introduction part, this paper illustrates systematically the studies aboutTamura Toshiko and explores the changes of methodology of Tamura Toshiko literarystudies, raising the problems to be solved and path of study of this paper.In the first chapter, the author describes the “awakening of sex”. In this chapter, theauthor will illustrate growing up and mature of female body, particularly the expressionof sexual awakening in the works of Tamura Toshiko through interpretation herrepresentative works Smell and Soulless, revealing the features and implications of the literary expression of sexual awakening in that period and cultural context. Smellportrayed a woman called “O Taki” looking for physical joy through the recall of thefirst person “I”. Her body, a “living” female body, overturned and deconstructed the“watched female body” in the tradition of literary expression. Meanwhile, the process ofsexual germination and awakening of “I” was also described vividly. Soulless portrayedthe body of a woman called “O Hisa” with exquisite style, filled with smooth feeling ofbody and ambiguous metaphors, leading lots of richness and challenge of text. From thepoint of rite of growing-up, this work combined the physical and mental uneasiness offemale at menarche with sexual germination and awakening at puberty, foregroundingthe bodies of female during this period so as to attract readers’ attention on the “literarybodies”.In the second chapter, the author describes the “love” and “sex” in Maid in love.This chapter introduces the concept of “community of unmarried women” through theinterpretation of Maid in love. The author analyzes the community of unmarried womenat moratorium when they have not been married after graduation from female school (orwomen’s university), revealing love and sex of these women and their living state,illustrating how can they be controlled and betrayed by ideological discourse in thatperiod. Women in the work were born with the cultivation of “love”,“purity” and“beauty”. They presented various living states ruled by the institution of powerdiscourse of the standard of “beauty” and inner criteria of “purity”. However, they alsoexplored the unknown world of knowledge, not just to accept passively the knowledgeof being a good mother and wife so as to geminate the queries to subject and doubtedthe existing institution with critical thinking and increasing eager to self-express. Theyshowed the characteristics of “new women”, declaring that the new time is coming orhas arrived. Maid in love, presenting Tamura Toshiko’ great attentions on the femalegrow up in the middle and end of Meiji period. In this work, from the description ofunmarried women living state at the end of Meiji and the beginning of Taisho, readerscan feel the change of time and realize the social and cultural value of literaturesimultaneously.In the third chapter, the writer describes “sex outside system”. Body is the object ofpower and the core of power. Japan began the process of modernization after MeijiReformation, a modernization process that country reformed citizenship. This chapterstudies the state of female sex living outside main rules of institutional discourses suchas “a good mother and wife”,“purity” and “heterosexuality”. The author proves howdoes the writer doubt the institutional discourse of “virginity” and breaks the rules of“virginity” personally through The temptation of medlar and blood. Pressure and The Snake focused on sex for the purpose of trading. In modern time, prostitute, as the mostinferior and villainous existence, was wholly marginalized and despised. TamuraToshiko abandoned the moral preachment and thought of renouncing evils andadvocating good deeds., expressing her doubts to modernization from the point view ofhumanity and mode of institutional discourse. Japanese “homosexuality”, as a hereticaland abnormal phenomenon, was wholly marginalized and rejected from1910to1920,until the end of the Edo. Tamura Toshiko published Desistance in1911which displayedher thoughts about female sex through bold representation of homosexuality and wasahead of time. The representation of homosexuality both inherited the content of pre-modern in Japanese traditional culture and included the quality of anti-modern. Perhaps,the though that drawing a line between the two points is itself an example of trapping inthe dualistic cage. This paper puts the homosexual history together with contemporarydiscourse to realize the real value of this text.In the forth chapter, the author narrates the “life” and “sex” within the institution.“Contradiction between men and women” is the main theme of Tamura Toshiko’s works.Meanwhile, Taisho period was also a changing time when professional women cameinto being and women began to confront with social identity crisis except for the genderidentity featured with “Contradiction between men and women”. In this chapter, theauthor analyzes A Woman Writer and Her Life, discovering the living state of femalewriters under the institution of “marriage” and “family”. A Woman Writer reveals thedifficult and pains for women writers to speak for themselves during the period whenthe modern gender in literature is being constructed and the forms of literatureundergoing great paradigm shift. A Woman Writer confronts double bind to hercharacter coming from both “public” and “private”. Her Life emphasizes to portray thewomen who can not to achieve whole self-identification between sexual identificationand social identification based on the main theme of “Contradiction between men andwomen”. Above all, women can not reconcile the contradictions between keepingcomplete self and fulfilling the character as a good mother and wife, which is rooted inthe construction of sexual differences in modern country whose cores are “authority offather” and “authority of husband” and that “family” is its basic unit.