Thematic Studies Of Oba Minako

Oba Minako (1930.11-2007.5) is a representative author of "the introverted generation" of Japan. She was born in a Japanese middle-class family, and her ancestors were landowners in the forested northeast of Japan. When she was'in elementary school, Japan invaded China and other oriental countries. At the age of fourteen, Oba Minako volunteered in the rescue team for the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, which was often referred as "inferno" by Japanese critics. Then she witnessed the pivotal change of Japan from militarism to democracy after the defeat of Japan in World War II. During the rapid economic development of Japan after the war, Oba Minako's husband was assigned to work in Alaska. Oba Minako traveled there with her husband and lived there for eleven years. Her life experience was intertwined with the political and economical situation of Japanese society, which provided her with great inspirations and materials for her later writings. In 1968, Oba Minako won both the 11th Gonzo New Writer Award and 59th Akutagawa Award for her novel Three Crabs. In 1970, she returned to Japan and officially started her career as an author. Since then, she had gradually established herself as an independent and professional woman until the renal failure ended her life in May,2007. Her prolific literary legacy has been collected in Complete Works of Oba Minako (1-25 Vol.).Oba Minako's works depict the complicated social issues and conflicts in Japanese society after World War ?. She delves into the problems that people confront in that special historical background. When presenting "people", Oba Minako inherits some important Japanese literary traditions. Seventy years after the war, her presentation of Japanese people and Japanese society begins to influence more and more Japanese writers. Therefore, studies on Oba Minako's works become more and more important among Japanese literary academia for a deeper understanding of contemporary Japanese literature and Japanese society. As for Chinese critics, elementary school Oba Minako studies have developed for almost forty years, and generated some significant results. However, both the domestic and international scholarships still demand a systematic research on the thematic studies of Oba Minako's works, which will offer a comprehensive and fundamental idea of Oba Minako's writings. This dissertation is based upon a close reading of Complete Works of Oba Minako (1-25 Vol.), summarizes the four major themes (exile, family, requiem and ecology) in Oba Minako's works, in order to show the thematic consistency and development in her literature.Chapter One:the theme of exile. This chapter consists of three sections. For the first section, starting from observing Oba Minako's personal experience of war and America life, the thesis tries to investigate the origin of the theme of exile in Oba's literary works. When sorting out the writer's exile characters that are depicted as "rootless weed", this section studies the writer's inheritance and development of Japanese literature tradition. The second section takes Shabby Museum, which won the Japanese Female Literary Award, as the subject of case study. These section focuses on the different fates of three exiling Asian women, who are also war brides, and analyzes their national identity crisis they confront. The third section takes Natuo, a Japanese American orphan in Urashimaso, as the body of case study, in order to figure out the writer's cognition of the failure of Japanese society, and the thinking over the hidden "exiled individuals" in Japanese inner society. In the description of the process of exile and salvation of Natuo, a war orphan and a hybrid, this part of the thesis shows the new thinking over the writer's idea of "community". The composition of exile theme also reflects the inner process of Oba's personal return from US to Japan in deed.Chapter two:the theme of family. When Oba Minako returned home from US, her literary themes started to shift to the daily life of Japanese society. Family became the major literary space in Oba Minako's writings. The first section examines the relationship between literature and family of modern Japanese society, and sorts out the development process of change from family novel to Oba's novels with the theme of family. Section Two examines the universal male-female relationship, which is "Tuga no Yume" in the author's term. The chaotic situation of "Tuga no Yume" can do the fatal destruction to marriage and family. After the breakdown of the family, "Tuga no Yume" becomes the form of how husband and wife deal with each other, again. Based upon the analysis of Lao Tzu's philosophy, this section discusses the male and female protagonists' skeption and rebellion agains marriage. The third section takes The Smile of a Mountain Witch as the focus of the case study, and investigates the prototype of Japanese female, and analyzes the domestication and limitation mechanism from family and marriage to Yamanba, a housewife in the novel. This section also examines the resistance to the unbalanced male-female relationships and the ending of family breakdown. The forth section mainly studies Katati mo Naku, and examines the obscure relationship between the two sexes. Katati mo Naku somehow means the destructive power that leads families to funerals. Based on the analysis of the concretization expression of the philosophical thought of Lao Tsu, this section discusses the solitary hero and heroine's distrust and rebel toward the marriage system. In the novels of this theme, Oba Minako remains standing on the side of the inner part of families to express the fact ---- family breakdown in the post-war Japanese society, which embodies the writer's infatuation to family and the constant exploration of men-women ecological coexistence in the family.Chapter three, the theme of requiem. The family theme creation is Oba Minako's expression and thinking over the permeating contemporary condition of Japanese society, while the requiem theme in her works involves the spiritual realm of post-war Japanese society. This chapter consists of four sections. The first section, in the perspective of comparative literature, studies the encounter of Oba Minako and Lu Xun, and the influence of Wild Grass on Oba's requiem consciousness. In section two, the thesis develops the study towards Fire Weed. Based on the concretization expression that "Fire Weed is the inscription of Wild Grass", the thesis analyzes the novel's requiem to female individuals. Section three takes Urashimaso as the subject of the case study, and investigates Oba Minako's series of works of requiem for the misery, which is caused by the experience of the nuclear explosion in Hiroshima. The thesis mainly studies Hiroshima and the series of works based on nuclear explosion in two spaces, and expounds the typical character of requiem and the requiem mission that runs through Oba's life. The fourth section takes Tears of Princess as the subject of case study, and explores the multilevel requiem hidden in the inner side of society in the background of high-speed development of the post-war Japanese society and the practical social problems that Japan faced (such as the loss of community).Chapter Four:the theme of ecology. The ecological crisis of post-war Japanese society is the original force of the writer's literal creation on the theme of ecology. This chapter consists of four sections. In the first section, taking the relation of literature and society as the breakthrough point, the thesis examines the writer's social responsibility and the practical significance of her literal creation on the theme of ecology. The second section focuses on Huna Gui Mushi, and studies the writer's ecofeminism thinking and anti-nuclear position. The third section, taking The Sea of Totem as the subject of case study, has explored the Oba's ecological Indian myth narration ethics and her environmental justice towards the weak civilization. The fourth section, however, focuses on The Floating Rivers, and investigates the writer's concern for river ecology and the construction issue on river ecological ethics.After the investigation of the four literature themes of Oba Minako's literary works, this thesis has found out that these four themes are mostly intertwined, showing the typical character of polyphony. The lay-out of the chapters embodies the writer's creation ideal:from social phenomena description to the comfort of spiritual realm, from spiritual realm to the social asthetics of ecological harmony, thus the thinking on social issues of Oba's literary works is obviously taking on a gradual broadening and deepening process. In the works of the theme of exile, Oba Minako showed her concern for the exiles' poetic habitation; in the literary creation of the theme of family, for example in Birds Crying, Oba Minako started to break through the biased viewpoint of the binary opposition between men and women, and advocate their intergrowth, which embodied certain advanced awareness; the theme of requiem embodies the soul of Japanese traditional culture and the demands of the times; the theme of ecology reflects the writer's cultural criticism towards the social reality and her values of the advanced aesthetics. Therefore, Oba Minako, essentially, showed the nature of ecofeminism writers.